The British papers are speculating, based I am sure on leaks from different sides of the Government that the decision on mandatory hotel curfews will be made tomorrow. But the shape of them looks to be a point of contention between the ‘doves’ and the ‘hawks’ in the UK Government.
It appears that the options are:
- All Arrivals – UK and non-UK residents – are quarantined at their expense at Government selected hotels enforced by staff based at the hotels. This apparently amounts to 10,000 per day and I suspect hotel rooms at Heathrow will run out pretty fast.
- Some Arrivals – from areas where COVID variants are rampant – Brazil and South Africa – would be quarantined only. There is a suggestion that neighbouring countries of these might also be subject to the mandatory quarantines. Apparently the UK has 77 people with the SA variant and 9 with the Brazilian.
So let’s keep our eyes peeled for the announcement due tomorrow.
In the meantime reports continue of 1-2 hour queues at UK Border over the past few days as officials (often down to 3 or 4 officers) check COVID certificates as well as immigration status. The e-gates appear to be off most of the time. The complexity of checking multiple documents, no priority for UK nationals and no standard format for the certificate appears to be the source. Plus, of course, insufficient officers due to a number being furloughed when terminals 3 and 4 closed. Doh!
The Netherlands banned all ferry, train and air travel from the UK overnight. This appears to be a temporary measure whilst the Dutch Government gets legislation through its parliament to mandate quarantine.
This ban may be extended by the EU to all EU countries. Portugal took these measures last week.
Article states UK but is it just England? If so, I guess it would apply to anyone flying into Gatwick as well.
Who in their right, other than people who live there, would fly to England just to be quarantined for however many days at their own expense!
Wonder if this will apply to cruisers flying into Heathrow before boarding their ship…or cruisers who disembark in England and who are scheduled to fly out Heathrow the same day.
If so, lot of cruises will be canceled for sure, especially the one one I’ll be on in July.
So the concept of vaccine passports are starting down the safety slope – to a point where any country/company/place that doesn’t mandate the vaccine will be a target of the cancel culture. But the “vaccine” (not actually a vaccine in the truest sense) only prevents the person receiving it from becoming ill and does not prevent that person from actually having the virus and/or spreading it.
Which of course means that masks/quarantines/social distancing (i.e., businesses going broke) will continue until everyone has the vaccine (not going to happen) or possibly until the number of new “cases” (whatever that means) is reduced enough as defined by those who can never be safe enough.
At which point it will be decreed by those same people that the mask mandate shall continue forever, because they will be unable to go from (in their minds) ‘very very safe’ to just ‘very safe’ and remember: mask rejection has been linked to everything from ‘nativism’ to ‘racism’ even to Nazism. It will be impossible, in fact unthinkable, NOT to wear masks for those reasons. The left won (how is your business) the recent election in the US and the only possible way forward for them is what I have just described.
There is no ‘post-COVID’ world that will look anything like pre-COVID.
and none of this will make any difference. Too late!
All this will do is cause misery to innocent people
It feeds in to the UK Government narratives – it’s all caused by foreigners and it’s all caused by the people. No admission that the failures of Government have anything to do with it.
Yes indeed it is but the themes unite the current party in power so play well inside the party