Wales Announces Ban on Travel From Hotspots in Rest of UK

The welcome to Wales sign is seen on Sept. 8, 2014 in Chepstow, Wales. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

People will be banned from entering Wales from regions in the UK where there are high rates of the CCP virus, starting from Friday at 6 p.m., the Welsh Government has announced.

Criterea for identifying which regions will be banned will be released later, the Welsh First Minister said in the Oct. 14 announcement.

“Evidence from public health professionals suggests coronavirus is moving from east to west across the UK and across Wales,” said First Minister Mark Drakeford in a statement. “As a general rule, it is concentrating in urban areas and then spreading to more sparsely populated areas as a result of people travelling.

“Much of Wales is now subject to local restriction measures because levels of the virus have risen and people living in those areas are not able to travel beyond their county boundary without a reasonable excuse,” he said.

According to the Welsh government, the ban will be on “areas with a high prevalence of coronavirus in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.”

This is designed to prevent the spread of infection within Wales and to other areas of the UK.

According to Drakeford, the prime minister had ignored his request for travel restrictions on hotspots in England.

The ban will start at 6:00 p.m. on Friday.

The devolved governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have adopted slightly different approaches to tackling the CCP virus from those set out in England by the central government in Westminster.

The Northern Ireland executive today announced that it was tightening restrictions for one month, including closing schools for an extra week after the half-term break. Northern Ireland has some of the highest infection rates for the CCP virus in Europe, and the highest in the UK.

The Prime Minister is facing growing cricitism over the three-tier alert system announced on Monday—by those who think it goes too far, not far enough, or lacks scientific rationale.

A Conservative MP yesterday resigned as a ministerial aide in a protest over the government’s lockdown policies, saying that the “attempted cure is worse than the disease.”

MP Chris Green said that the measures covering his constituency of Bolton had failed to control the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Meanwhile, the Labour leader Kier Starmer has called for the government to ditch the new system in favour of a “circuit breaker” lockdown.

A circuit breaker was recommended by the government’s official scientific advisers three weeks ago, according to minutes released on Monday, but the advice was ignored.

According to a snap poll on Monday, 40 percent of the public would support tougher measures, with only 15 percent saying they went too far.

Another survey found that 54 percent think the government should have followed SAGE advice with a 3-week lockdown in September. In another YouGov survey, 65 percent said that they would support a 2-week lockdown.