Strict new requirements are coming for travelers who want to enter Britain starting Monday as worry about new mutations of the deadly coronavirus mount.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed new rules that mandate everyone traveling to Britain must have a negative coronavirus test within the previous 72 hours, and must go into immediate isolation for up to 10 days, The Times of London reported.
Government data shows that the number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus in the UK surged 35 percent over the last week. The burden is taking a heavy toll on health care workers.
The restrictions have no end date, but the government said they will last at least a month. Since most vacation travel was already banned, the new rules are most likely to affect business travel and British citizens returning from other countries.
The new rules kick in days after the prime minister said the nation’s vaccine program will run around the clock seven days a week. Johnson said that after progress with vaccinations “what we don’t want to see is all that work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is vaccine-busting,” The Times reported.
The number of new coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom hit 55,885 on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University. That was down from the record high of 68,192 on Jan. 8. New deaths reached 1,285, also down from the record of 1,568 deaths reached on Wednesday.
The virus has killed nearly 87,500 people in the UK, including 76,338 in England.
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