As concerns grow over new COVID strains, the UK government is considering enforcing Australia’s hotel-quarantine strategy.
If approved, all arrivals will be forced to undergo a 10-day mandatory quarantine at a government-approved hotel at their own expense.
The final decision is expected to be announced over the week, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with the COVID-0 Committee today.
As of yet, several ministers have reportedly asked officials to get ready for the implementation of such quarantine hotels.
But this is not even the most controversial decision the U.K. government has made so far this year.
On January 18, the U.K. closed all travel corridor agreements in order to “protect against the risk of as yet unidentified new strains.” According to Johnson, what really concerns him are the strains that have not been discovered yet.
These rather strict restrictions are expected to further reduce the risk of virus variants entering the U.K. and undermining the vaccination plan.
The truth is that the government seems to be losing the fight against the rapid spread of the new highly-contagious strain that first emerged in the U.K.
“In addition to spreading more quickly, it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant… may be 30% more deadly than the original virus,” Johnson said Friday.
But, how effective have been the Australian quarantine system?
Compared to the U.K., Australia’s strategy has undoubtedly better helped reduce the spread of COVID-19 and death toll.
Australia has reported around 900 deaths and 28,000 confirmed cases while in the U.K. more than 3.500.000 people have been infected and 95,000 have lost their lives to the virus.
On the other side, this system has demonstrated to be extremely expensive.
Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, stated that this system is costing people “multiples of what it used to cost to travel to Australia.”