Brits returning from France and Netherlands will have to quarantine for 14 days
Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba were also added to the list.
Travellers arriving from France and the Netherlands after 4am on Saturday will be required to quarantine for 14 days due to fears over rising numbers of coronavirus cases.
The move came after Boris Johnson said ministers would be ‘absolutely ruthless’ in deciding on whether to impose the self-isolation requirement. Also added to the quarantine list are Monaco, Malta, Turks & Caicos and Aruba.
The decision to add France will cause dismay for thousands of British holidaymakers currently in the country.
It was made in response to the spread of the virus, with the latest 14-day cumulative figures showing 32.1 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in France, compared with 18.5 in the UK.
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The move will come as a bitter blow to the hard-pressed French tourism industry which relies heavily on visitors from the UK.
Before the announcement was made, Johnson said: ‘We have got to be absolutely ruthless about this, even with our closest and dearest friends and partners. I think everybody understands that.”
During a visit to Belfast the PM said the Government could not allow the UK’s population to be ‘reinfected or the disease to come back in’. He added: ‘That is why the quarantine measures are very important and we have to apply them in a very strict way.’
In late July the UK shut down its so called ‘travel corridor’ with Spain, effectively removing it from its safe list, after it reported nearly 900 new daily infections over two days.
The changes requiring people returning to quarantine for two weeks came into effect just a few hours after they were announced, while thousands of Brits were in the Mediterranean country.
Britons scrambled to get home, causing travel chaos, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the move ‘unjust’ and an ‘error’.
He said at the time that people would have more chance catching coronavirus in the UK than in the Balearic and Canary islands or the region of Valencia.
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