Via BBC NEWS

UK residents returning from coronavirus hotspots abroad will have to quarantine in hotels from February 15th, Government sources have told the BBC.

Owners will be asked to provide accommodation for more than 1,000 new people every day, documents suggest. Passengers will have to stay in their rooms for 10 nights, with security guards accompanying them outside.

Labour called the measures “too little, too late” to deal properly with new overseas strains of Covid. “It is beyond comprehension that these measures won’t even start until February 15th,” said Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.

Speaking on BBC’s Question Time, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the Government was “aiming to see” February 15th as the date new hotel quarantine plans for arrivals into the UK will be introduced.

Asked why it had taken so long to implement he said: “We want to make sure that we get this right so that when people go to those hotels, the hotels are in place, the transport is in place.”

The airports thought to be under consideration as locations for quarantine hotels are Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

The rules are expected to apply to UK nationals and residents returning to the country from 30 “red list” COVID-19 hotspots, including several South American and African countries where new Covid variants have been detected in large numbers of people.