Boris Johnson on March 31, 2021 in London. – Hollie Adams / AP / SIPA
The British government on Monday banned the entry into the United Kingdom of travelers from India, due to a worsening of the pandemic in this country, allowing access only to British residents, who will have to pay from their pocket forty at the hotel.
Health Minister Matt Hancock told the House of Commons that 103 cases of the Indian variant have been identified in the UK, “the vast majority of which have links to international travel and were detected by our tests at the border. He explained that the samples had been analyzed to see if this new variant had “characteristics of concern”, such as vaccine resistance.
Red List
“After studying the data, and as a precaution, we made the difficult but vital decision to put India on the red list,” from Friday morning, he told MPs. This decision obliges any British and Irish resident entering the country to observe a ten-day quarantine in a hotel at their own expense.
Due to the situation in India, Prime Minister Boris Johnson canceled a trip planned for the end of April in the country, his first major trip abroad since taking office, his services announced on Monday. “In view of the current situation in terms of coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to visit India next week,” Downing Street said in a statement.
A partnership with the two countries
The Conservative leader will instead meet with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi “later this month” about their “ambitious plans for a future UK-India partnership”. According to the same source, “they are looking forward to being able to meet in person later this year”.
Boris Johnson was originally scheduled to travel to India in January for his first major bilateral visit abroad since taking office in July 2019, but the trip had already been postponed due to the worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic in United Kingdom, currently in the process of breaking out of containment.
270,000 contaminations in 24 hours
This visit, supposed to take place shortly after the United Kingdom’s exit from the customs union and the European single market, was to make it possible to “strengthen the trade and climate partnership” with India.
Boris Johnson invited India to participate, along with Australia and South Korea, in the G7 summit, a club of rich countries of which the United Kingdom will take over the presidency in 2021. The United Kingdom will also host this year in Glasgow (Scotland) the COP26, the major UN climate conference.
India on Monday identified a new record of new contaminations: 273,810 cases over 24 hours. This is the fifth day in a row that the country has crossed the 200,000 new case mark. In the capital New Delhi, the most affected city in this country of 1.3 billion people, the authorities have decided to impose from Monday evening to the twenty million inhabitants a one-week confinement to contain the outbreak Covid-19 cases and reduce pressure on hospitals.