The United Kingdom on Tuesday introduced enhanced measures to stop spread of coronavirus for travellers entering its borders. The new guidelines include fines of up to
10,000 pounds and a 10-year jail term for the most extreme breaches of
quarantine rules by any travellers, reports AFP. The measures were announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock in a statement to the House of Commons. These fresh measures will be enforced with a of 1,000-pound for any international arrival failing to take a mandatory COVID-19 test while 2,000-pound worth fine will be imposed on failure of taking the second test, with
quarantine automatically extended to 14 days.

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Heavier penalties between between 5,000-pound and 10,000-pound will be enforced on the travellers if he/she is found not quarantining in a state-designated hotel. 

According to the government, around 16 hotels with 4,600 rooms are prepared and directed to function for the self-isolation purposes.

As far as prison sentences are concerned, a term of upto 10 years will be awarded to anyone who lies or provide misinformation on their passenger locator form in connection with being on the red list country.

A red list is a list of 33 countries that are perceived as being
at a high risk of transmitting variants of coronavirus. It is released by the government and covers a better part of South America, southern Africa, the UAE and Portugal.

The new rules largely impacts UK residents and Irish nationals who are travelling from red list countries while non residential travellers are completely barred from these locations.

India is not in the red list so far but the operations between the two countries, however, have been made limited in view of the new highly contagious Kent variant of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, the UK has also made two coronavirus tests and a specified quarantine period mandatory for travellers arriving from abroad.

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“From Monday, all international arrivals will be
required by law to take further PCR tests on day two and day eight of that
quarantine,” said Hancock in the House of Commons

“If either of these post-arrival tests comes back positive, they
will have to quarantine for a further 10 days from the date of the test,” he
said.

The new rules comes at the backdrop of  government’s announcement that
the country’s COVID-19 cases have dived by  47%. 

Meanwhile, the UK is currently administering vaccine jabs at over
1,500 sites across the country with 12 million people in the priority groups said to be covered.