London, Feb 3 (EFE) .- The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, said on Wednesday that “it is not practical” to “completely” close the borders against the entry of foreign variants of the coronavirus and maintained that the current quarantine system It is “one of the strictest” in the world.
Questioned in Parliament by the leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer, the head of the Conservative Executive ruled out banning all international travel and arrivals, concluding that it would be an impediment to the importation of products such as food and medicine.
Starmer argued that “the main risk for the vaccination program is the arrival of new variants of the virus, such as the South African one,” and criticized that some 21,000 people now arrive daily in the country who could contribute to spreading the virus before being isolated in quarantine .
Labor argued that the government’s scientific advisory committee has advocated “a complete preventive closure of all borders or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors just upon arrival” on British soil.
Starmer regretted that the government “will still take weeks” to apply its new measure of imposing a mandatory quarantine in a specially designated hotel to all arrivals from places with risk variants, such as Brazil and South Africa.
He added that, in any case, that immediate and more controlled quarantine would still be insufficient because it would only apply to certain selected countries.
This week, British health authorities have confirmed that the South African variant of the coronavirus has spread among the population by detecting cases not linked to a trip to that country or with other known positives.
At the same time, the public health body Public Health England has revealed that the so-called “British variant” has mutated again and, like the Brazilian and South African ones, could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines. EFE
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