LONDON – Britain passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, a tragic milestone that revealed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s mistakes in treating the pandemic, as well as the difficult choices he now faces in trying to keep the new variants away. lethal viruses in the country.
The death toll in Britain has long been the worst in Europe, but a rapidly spreading variant of the virus has propelled the country’s daily death rates to levels never seen since the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in April, despite the national blockade. Per capita, Britain’s death rate was the worst in the world in the past week.
“It is difficult to calculate the sadness contained in this gloomy statistic,” said a solemn Johnson on the death toll, which reached 100,162. “You would exhaust the thesaurus of misery. It is a terrible and tragic loss of life. “
Johnson was expected to discuss mandatory hotel quarantine for travelers arriving in Britain from countries with dangerous outbreaks of the virus. But the details of that plan have yet to be worked out, which attests to both its far-reaching economic implications and the logistical challenge of hosting, feeding and monitoring thousands of passengers who land at British airports.
Stricter travel restrictions would aim to keep new variants from Brazil and South Africa outside Britain. Among the proposals under consideration is one that would require travelers from South Africa, South America and Portugal to be quarantined in hotels for 10 days after arrival.
This would push Britain towards Australia, which has used hotel quarantines in a successful effort to keep the virus outside its borders. But Britain would be acting months after Australia and after the spread of its local variant has already flooded hospitals.
Speaking to reporters on Downing Street, Johnson refused to insist on the mistakes that, in the way his government handled the crisis, worsened the death toll. As several reporters reminded him, the government once said that keeping the death toll at 20,000 would be a success.
“I deeply regret every life lost,” said Johnson, adding that he accepted the responsibility. “We really did everything we could and we continue to do everything we can to minimize the loss of life.”
Johnson’s chief medical advisor, Chris Whitty, was more thoughtful, acknowledging that some issues could have been better addressed. In the early days of the pandemic, he said, experts did not adequately assess the importance of facial masks, nor did they sufficiently understand the significance of asymptomatic transmission. As the crisis progressed, Whitty said, the medical profession has developed new and improved ways to treat Covid patients.
For Johnson, the pandemic has become a cruel race between vaccinating the population and avoiding new variants, which could fuel another outbreak of infections. On the vaccine front, Britain continues to make great strides, injecting 6.8 million people, the fastest pace of any major country.
But in other respects, the government still seems backward and disorganized. In the travel plan, some health experts argue that nothing less than a general hotel quarantine would not be effective. But critics say the government would not be able to handle the logistical challenge, as arriving passengers would quickly fill hotels around London’s Heathrow Airport, the country’s main gateway.
Britain’s plans come at a time when the United States is acting to tighten restrictions on foreign visitors. President Biden rescinded an order from former President Donald J. Trump that would have relaxed travel bans for non-Americans from Britain, Brazil, South Africa and much of the European Union.
The new US rules, which went into effect on Tuesday, created confusion at Heathrow airport, as British Airways refused passengers bound for the US. This even included some who met the updated guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control, which stipulated that they would have to produce a negative coronavirus test or a letter from the doctor confirming that they had recovered from Covid and were no longer infectious.
For the travel industry, the quarantine would be the latest in a succession of scams that have cost tens of thousands of jobs and pushed some companies, like cross-channel train operator Eurostar, to the brink of financial abyss.
“It will be another nail in the coffin of the travel industry,” said Steven Freudmann, president of the Travel and Tourism Institute, which lobbies for the industry. “The industry understands the reasons and we put the nation’s health first, but what is so frustrating is that the rules are literally changing every week.”
In Britain, “the closing of doors seems to be happening 12 months late,” said Freudmann, adding that the move would further undermine confidence at a time when the industry was beginning to plan for recovery.
Even those traveling to and from countries not considered to be at high risk will be concerned that the risk status of these nations will change without warning while they are away. And while some hotels may benefit from quarantined passenger accommodation, that would be a short-term gain.
“Who wants to come knowing that you have to spend 10 days in a hotel and pay for the privilege?” Mr. Freudmann said.
Britain’s travel policy has been marked by twists and turns since the beginning. The government initially argued that the restrictions would make little general difference, since the virus was already circulating in Britain.
Then, in July, when he acted abruptly to introduce a quarantine on travelers from Spain, he embarrassed the minister responsible for aviation policy, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who learned of the decision while on vacation – in Spain.
According to the rules in force last summer, travelers from a number of low-risk countries were exempt from the obligation to isolate themselves. But the list was revised every week, making the decision to travel a gamble for tourists, thousands of whom went abroad while the changes took effect.
Britain was slow to introduce requirements for travelers to have a negative coronavirus test, and when it did recently, it found it difficult to provide enough staff to check those arriving, causing crowded scenes in some airport arrivals halls.
Some critics argue that the problem with the British system is the lack of oversight, not only for travelers in quarantine, but also for Britons who asked to stay home after the test was positive for the virus, or in contact with someone who it did.
“The elephant in the room here is the number of people internally that we need to isolate and who are not – and we really have to resolve this,” former health secretary Jeremy Hunt told Sky News.