At last, after days of well leaked proposals, the Government has explained what it plans to do to ‘control its borders’ and the mandatory quarantine of arrivals but only from some ‘high risk’ countries.
People leaving the country will have to declare the reason for travel to their carrier with ‘Holidays’ not being accepted as a valid reason. Passengers being told to return home if they don’t have a valid reason for their trip. This places a further burden on travel companies already responsible for checking the myriad of requirements for travellers to enter their destinations.
The ban on arrivals from high risk countries will leave British Nationals in quarantine at their own expense in airport hotels selected by the UK Government. There are 22 high risk countries according to the Daily Mail are:
- Angola
- Argentina
- Bolivia
- Botswana
- Brazil
- Cape Verde
- Chile
- Colombia
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Ecuador
- Eswatini
- French Guiana
- Guyana
- Lesotho
- Malawi
- Mauritius
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Panama
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores)
- Seychelles
- South Africa
- Suriname
- Tanzania
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Further details of how the scheme will operate in practise are not yet available, with ministers just talking about passengers being ‘met’ at the airport and taken to the hotel directly from there. Numbers are estimated to be some hundreds of passengers per day, but this is expected to go down as word of the scheme filters out.
[…] Yesterday the details of the UK mandatory quarantine featuring 10 days, at a hotel of the UK Governments choosing were announced. (You can read here the details). […]