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The British government on Sunday pushed back against criticism it was too slow to impose travel restrictions on India as a coronavirus variant identified in the subcontinent spreads in the UK.
England and the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales will unlock parts of their economy on Monday but the future roadmap for reopening has been put in doubt over the more transmissible variant.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News it was completely wrong to suggest the UK could have acted faster to designate India as a red list country meaning arriving travellers would have to quarantine in hotels.
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Nearly half of EU nationals living in post-Brexit Britain fear they will lose rights and not be treated the same as native citizens in the future, a study published on Thursday says.
EU nationals already living in Britain before December 31, 2020, and who registered under the EU settlement scheme, retain the same rights to live, work and access social security despite Britain s departure from the bloc.
Most of the respondents to the Independent Monitoring Authority study said they were treated the same as British citizens.
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But 44 per cent said they were not confident that would last.
IMA, an organisation set up to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit, polled about 3,000 people from the 27 EU member countries in the online study.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was anxious about the spread of a Covid-19 variant from India and ruled no measures out as statistics showed cases more than doubled in the past week.
“We are anxious about it, it has been spreading,” Mr Johnson said on Thursday, referring to the B16172 variant. “There’s a range of things we could do. We’re ruling nothing out.”
Cases of the new strain have risen to 1,313 from 520 over the past week, Public Health England said.
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Authorities are carrying out surge testing in places such as Bolton, in north-west England, where cases have been detected, and parts of London, the authority said.