UK to bring in hotel quarantine for travellers from February 15

Bloomberg

The UK will require travellers arriving from coronavirus hot spots to quarantine in hotels starting February 15, almost three weeks after the plan was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Arrivals from countries on the UK’s travel ban list will be required to isolate for 10 days in government-approved accommodation, the Department for Health and Social Care said in a statement. Officials are seeking bids from hotels near airports and ports to support the program. The announcement follows days of confusion over how soon the government would implement a policy it sees as critical to prevent new strains of coronavirus that may be more resistant to vaccines from entering the country. Hotels said they were kept in the dark over the government’s intentions.
“We’ve been working to make sure that we know what we need to ask of the hotels,” Cabinet minister James Cleverly told LBC radio. “If you’re a hotel and you’re next to a major airport, you’ve got a pretty good idea that you’re the kind of hotel we’re looking for.” The Telegraph newspaper reported ministers aim to secure 28,000 hotel rooms for the program, a number Cleverly declined to confirm.
Johnson is hoping to use the country’s so-far successful vaccination program as a springboard to reopen the economy after a third lockdown which started last month.
He has said schools will open from March 8 at the earliest, and has promised to publish a plan for easing the restrictions in the week of February 22.
Keeping out vaccine-resistant strains of Covid-19 is crucial to those plans. The government has put 30 countries, including the whole of South America, a swath of southern Africa and Portugal, on the travel ban list after new variants that emerged in Brazil and South Africa in recent weeks heightened concerns.