Strict new requirements are arriving for travelers who wish to enter Britain as of Monday, concerned about new mutations in the deadly coronavirus.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed new rules that mandate that everyone traveling to Britain must have a negative coronavirus test in the previous 72 hours, and must be in immediate isolation for up to 10 days, reported The Times of London .
Government data show that the number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus in the UK has increased by 35% in the last week. The burden is taking a heavy toll on healthcare professionals.
The restrictions have no expiration date, but the government said they will last at least a month. Since most holiday travel has already been banned, the new rules are likely to affect business travelers and British citizens returning from other countries.
The new rules take effect days after the prime minister said the country’s vaccination program will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Johnson said that after progressing with vaccinations “what we don’t want to see is all this work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is destroying the vaccine,” reported The Times.
The number of new coronavirus cases in the UK reached 55,885 on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number fell from a record 68,192 on January 8. The new deaths reached 1,285, also below the record of 1,568 deaths reached on Wednesday.
The virus killed almost 87,500 people in the UK, including 76,338 in England.