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The UK government “will consider all possibilities” to enforce Covid-19 rules for travelers and will not rule out installing quarantined hotels and using GPS trackers to combat the spread of the coronavirus, said the Secretary of Relations Dominic Raab exteriors.
People should be aware that there is now a “high risk” of being caught if they are unable to isolate themselves for the necessary 10 days after arriving in the UK, Raab said.
The crackdown on travel is a “preventive” approach to preventing new variants of the virus from harming the UK’s mass vaccination program, he added, which aims to provide vaccines to all adults by September.
As of Monday, the United Kingdom is closing their travel corridors with countries around the world, which means that all visitors from abroad will need a negative coronavirus test result 72 hours before the trip to enter Britain.
Raab said on Sunday that Public Health England would also step up testing to ensure that people are isolated in their own homes after the trip.
England is no longer listening to Johnson’s blocking requests
He refused to dismiss a Sunday Times report that authorities are preparing quarantined hotels and the use of a global positioning system and facial recognition technology to ensure that people stay where they are, saying that “all possibilities” are being considered.
The UK has announced a new subsidy program for airports and its ground operations to help with the costs of closing travel corridors, with more details coming soon, according to a post on Twitter by Transport Minister Robert Courts.
This was well received by the British Airline Pilots Association, but they said the situation for the aviation industry was “getting desperate” and called for a broader recovery plan.
England is in the second week of its third national blockade, with schools closed and people forced to stay home, while the government tries to control the increase in cases during the winter. There are currently more than 37,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients, and the number of daily deaths remains high – with another 1,295 deaths recorded on Saturday.
Under pressure
NHS England CEO Simon Stevens said the hospitals were “under extreme pressure”, with 53,000 NHS employees on leave for work related to viruses. “Every 30 seconds, in England, another patient is being Admittaken to hospital with coronavirus, ”he told the BBC.
There are early signs that cases are starting to decline, but government scientists say the NHS will be under severe pressure for weeks, due to the time lag between catching the infection and becoming seriously ill.
Raab urged caution about easing restrictions in England, saying they could begin to be lifted in “early spring”, but it would be a gradual process, rather than a “big bang”.
More than 39.7 million doses administered: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker
Ministers are pinning their hopes of ending the crisis on the mass vaccination program and plan to offer vaccines to 15 million of the most vulnerable people by mid-February, and another 17 million by spring. More than 3.5 million people in the UK have already received their first injection of the two-dose vaccine.
The British were instructed to wait up to 12 weeks for the second shot, instead of the initial two or three weeks expected, so that as many people as possible could get some protection. Raab told Sky News that he could not guarantee that everyone would receive their second dose in 12 weeks, only that “we should” be able to deliver.
Asked by Times Radio to confirm the Sunday Times report on quarantined hotels and GPS tracking, Raab did not deny the story, saying, “We are not in normal times.”
(Supported updates for airports from the seventh paragraph.)