British Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduces unprecedented quarantine measures, freezing the UK economy.
Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, much of Hampshire and Essex will now face the strictest four-level quarantine rules from 00:01 on December 26, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. The counties will join London and southeastern England, where they have already introduced quarantines in an attempt to curb the spread of a new type of coronavirus.
While the government hopes the vaccination program, which began in December, will lift the restrictions in the spring, the new mutation complicates matters, Hancock said.
“This Christmas and early 2021 are going to be tough”, – he said.
“The new strain complicates things because it spreads much faster”.
A new coronavirus mutation, discovered in September in the southeast of England, alarmed scientists and the government, as it spreads 70% faster than other strains.
Moreover, two new cases of an even more contagious variant of the coronavirus from South Africa have been detected in Britain. Citizens who have recently arrived from there have been quarantined.