Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
The UK is “actively” working on a plan to quarantine arriving travelers in hotels to protect them from coronavirus infections from overseas, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
“We want to make sure that we protect our population, protect this country from reinfection from abroad,” Johnson said, adding that the UK should consider that there is “at least a theoretical risk” that a new variant of the disease will be immune. could turn out to be for the vaccines. his government is rolling out. “That idea of looking at hotels is definitely something we’re actively working on right now.”
In a pooled broadcast on Monday, the prime minister also warned that lifting lockdown rules too soon could trigger another wave of infections in the UK amid mounting pressure from members of his Conservative party to set a timetable. propose to reopen the economy.
Ministers have previously pledged to ease restrictions once the target of vaccinating nearly 15 million people who are considered most vulnerable to the disease is met, which Johnson says is still on track by mid-February.
Capital punishment
But as the total death toll in the UK is likely to exceed 100,000 this week and infections are still high – although decreasing – there is growing evidence that the timetable for lifting the lockdown is shifting, possibly even in the summer.
This has alarmed prominent Tories, including Mark Harper and Steve Baker, who have made demands on the government to draw up plans to lift the lockdown, and especially to reopen schools, and the criteria it will use.
“Once the vulnerable are protected, the first priority should be to reopen schools,” Harper said on Twitter on Monday.
Johnson reiterated that his government’s priority is to reopen schools as soon as possible, though he said that any lifting of the blockage must be done in a “responsible and prudent manner.”
Infection rate
“I want nothing more than to reopen schools,” he said. “We want to do that in a way that is consistent with fighting the epidemic and limiting the infection rate.”
The Johnson administration views vaccines as the UK’s ticket and is considering further tightening border controls to try to keep out any tensions that could undermine the effectiveness of the doses administered. Ministers are expected to make a decision this week on whether or not to quarantine arriving travelers in hotels, as countries like Australia and Singapore have done.
So far, the UK has given a first dose of the vaccine to more than 6.3 million people, requiring approximately 8.7 million elderly and vulnerable people to be vaccinated over the next three weeks to reach Johnson’s goal.
The UK uses shots developed by Pfizer Inc. in partnership with BioNTech SE, and through AstraZeneca Plc in partnership with the University of Oxford. A third vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. has been approved, but the first deliveries are not expected until spring.
“AstraZeneca has committed to deliver 2 million doses per week to the UK and we do not expect any changes to that,” Johnson spokesman Jamie Davies told reporters when asked about the introduction of the vaccine. Work on Pfizer’s plant in Belgium means that “inventories this month and next month will be lower than previously expected,” he said, but ramped up so that total volume “remains the same from January to March.”
(Updates with details of vaccination program in the last three paragraphs)