Desk Report
Publish: 28 Nov 2021, 09:29 pm
Britain's Health secretary Sajid Javid || Photo: Collected
Britain's
government on Sunday defended the pace and scale of its response to the new
omicron strain of Covid-19 against criticism that it was again falling behind
the curve.
Health
secretary Sajid Javid said mandatory mask-wearing will return to shops and
public transport in England on Tuesday, and told families to plan for Christmas
"as normal", despite new rules to combat the omicron variant, reports AFP.
Also
from Tuesday, all passengers arriving in Britain are being instructed to take a
PCR test for Covid-19, and self-isolate until they register negative.
Prime
Minister Boris Johnson had announced the tougher measures at a hastily arranged
news conference on Saturday, but did not specify when they would take effect.
Johnson
and other senior conservatives were widely criticized for his travel and
quarantine policy earlier in the pandemic, when he kept borders open to foreign
travelers even as infection rates spiraled, yielding Britain one of the world's
worst per-capita death tolls from Covid.
The
government controversially dropped the masks mandate in July for England, after
a prior lockdown, but the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland had kept it in place.
All
four UK nations are expected to adopt the same PCR rule, after England again
diverged in July by requiring only a simple lateral flow test for incoming
passengers on flights, ships and trains.
Travel
from 10 countries in southern Africa is now banned because of omicron, but
Javid conceded that hundreds of passengers had arrived on flights from South
Africa on Friday without being tested.
But
he told BBC television: "I think the speed at which we acted at could not
have been any faster."
'Holes
in the defences'
Javid
ruled out reintroducing social distancing rules and work-from-home guidance,
which were also controversially discarded in England earlier this year against
the advice of government scientists.
Javid
said it was too early to judge the effectiveness of existing vaccines against
omicron, as drugs manufacturers rush to research new treatments against the
emergent strain.
But
the government is seeking approval from its Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization
(JCVI) to expand the rollout of booster jabs, shortening the time-frame between
second and third shots, and broadening the age range to all over-18s.
The
JCVI is expected to respond early next week, Javid said.
He
added that no further cases of Omicron had been detected in Britain, after the
government on Saturday confirmed the first two cases, both linked to travel
from southern Africa.
The
opposition Labour party said the government was again doing too little, too
late after Omicron emerged.
Even
after Tuesday, passengers can enter Britain without a pre-departure test and
travel freely from their port of entry on public transport, Labour's foreign
affairs spokeswoman Lisa Nandy said.
"We
desperately want to see them tighten up the travel restrictions," she said
on Sky News.
"There
is a real problem when for 18 months the government has been warned that there
are holes in those defences and still hasn't taken action to plug (them)."
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