Visitors to UK will need a negative test
The U.K. said it will close its travel corridors with countries around the world, meaning all visitors from overseas will require a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours of travel to enter Britain.
Visitors may be checked when they arrive in the U.K. and could face substantial fines if they do not comply, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a televised press conference on Friday.
The new rules will come into force at 4 a.m. local time Monday. “We will be stepping up our enforcement both at the border and in country,” Johnson said.
The latest restrictions will add to the pain of an airline industry that’s been battered by the epidemic for going on a full year. Carriers have essentially written off the first quarter and are focused on a recovery built around vaccinations taking place during the summer.
The alarm raised by the U.K.’s top health experts is already raising the question of when restrictions can be raised. Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty warned that while he expects “things are going to improve in the spring,” the new variant of virus might make that more difficult.
Britain is already grappling to control its own faster-spreading variant of the virus that forced the country into a third lockdown earlier this month. Johnson said it will continue to “be up and down.”
The countries from which visitors could previously arrive in the U.K. without needing to quarantine on arrival included Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, and Norway.
All arrivals will then have to quarantine for 10 days, though this can be cut short if they test negative after 5 days under the U.K.’s test-release program. The measures will be in place at until at least Feb. 15.
On Thursday, the U.K. banned flights from the whole of South America as well as Portugal, Panama and Cape Verde over concerns about a new variant of coronavirus that has emerged in Brazil.