UK to announce hotel quarantine for Britons returning, Canada plans to restrict foreign travel

The British government will on Wednesday announce plans for limited hotel quarantine for Britons returning from 30 high-risk countries covered by a travel ban, the Times reported on Wednesday.

These countries include South America, Portugal, Cape Verde and South Africa, the report added.

Separately, Johnson has rejected calls by interior minister Priti Patel for a temporary closure of borders, the newspaper reported, adding Patel had pushed for a travel ban to stop potentially vaccine resistant strains of coronavirus being imported into the country.

Johnson has said he was looking at the option of introducing quarantine hotels for those coming to Britain to prevent the risk of “vaccine-busting” new coronavirus variants entering the country.

The bosses of airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and easyJet criticised on Tuesday a possible plan for mandatory quarantine in hotels for some or all arrivals to Britain and called for a support package.

Britain has suffered a sharp rise in infections and deaths in the new year, fuelled partly by a new more highly contagious variant of the virus first identified in southeast England.

Canada will soon make foreign travel harder in a bid to clamp down on the coronavirus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday without giving details, prompting major provinces to demand action.

A second wave of coronavirus is sweeping Canada and health officials say some hospitals run the risk of being overwhelmed. Trudeau is urging Canadians not to travel abroad and said Ottawa intended to introduce more restrictions.

“All options are on the table and we will be announcing new measures very soon,” he said, triggering frustration from Quebec and Ontario, the two most populous provinces.

Trudeau had previously said one possibility would be to oblige arriving passengers to spend a 14-day quarantine period in a hotel at their own expense. The idea was initially proposed by Quebec premier Francois Legault.

“I repeat our demand to Mr. Trudeau – it’s time to act,” Legault told reporters. “We can either ban non-essential travel or isolate travelers in hotels.”

People arriving from abroad currently only have to promise they will go into two weeks of quarantine. Everyone flying into Canada must provide a mandatory negative test for coronavirus.

Ontario premier Doug Ford told reporters Ottawa should go much further, saying, “I can’t for the life of me figure out why we aren’t testing every single person that comes through this airport … We have to lock down.”

Canada, which has so far recorded a total of 19,238 deaths and 753,011 cases, says it is still on track to vaccinate the entire population by the end of September.