Passengers entering the UK will likely be subject to a 14-day quarantine period under new laws being drafted up in Westminster.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has stood in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson for the last three weeks, confirmed that the government is considering requiring all arrivals to fill out health declaration cards and self-quarantine for a period of two weeks.
The UK is one of the few European or Commonwealth countries not to have implemented some form of self-isolation requirement in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The move would follow self-isolation requirements put in place in Australia (15 March), Ireland (17 March), and Canada (24 March).
Speaking in an interview on Britain’s Sky News, Secretary Raab said, “That’s something that we will be looking at and it could include the testing for people coming in, it could include social distancing measures.
“We’ll make sure that we are absolutely on top of the scientific evidence and are taking all the measures that are necessary to protect people’s health, to protect their lives but also to preserve our way of life as we go forward, economically and socially.”
