It appears that the UK Government is on target to clamp down on people arriving in to the country. The UK Press reports that they are already in talks with hotel chains to secure rooms to accommodate people forcibly quarantined at the airport hotels. Until then, arrivals can designate where they will quarantine with checks supposedly being undertaken.
The new proposal is that arrivals, regardless of whether they come with the required negative COVID test or not, will be required to quarantine, at their expense, for 10 days. At present you can take a COVID test after 5 days and leave the isolation premises. This appears to be gone as an option under the new proposals.
There is even a suggestion that arrivals will have a GPS Tag – currently reserved for people on bail or convicted criminals – fitted for the duration. Other proposals is to stop all arrivals, although how this impacts the right of UK Nationals and Residents to return to their normal place of residence is unclear.
Rules are to be finalised on Monday by ministers.
There are pictures of continuing large queues at UK Immigration with waits of 60-90 minutes reported by arrivals.
The tag option seems a bit like science fiction? Then all those people have to go back, where? to give their tags??? Yikes…and 10 days quarantine in a hotel in London is expensive for sure… Oh well, I think is the same that happens in Australia now, is that correct?
@Martina – Yes it’s the same as Australia but they are also limiting the number of arrivals per day. I guess this is part of the picture that the UK hasn’t managed to explain yet. The tags work now for those on bail or with prohibitions of going to certain areas. I assume that there would be staff at the hotels to manage people and to tell them when they can leave – this is done in Hong Kong I believe.
Weird times ahead…I do hope we can go eventually to some sort of cases going down, vaccines working and people being able to travel again!