UK Imposes Two Weeks Quarantine From Tonight For People Returning From Spain

UK holidaymakers in Spain are facing a two-week quarantine after the country was hit by a new outbreak of coronavirus.

Tourists in Spain are facing a race against time to fly back home to avoid the mandatory two-week quarantine that will come into effect at midnight tonight. 

The quarantine will affect everyone who has gone on holiday to the Mediterranean country in the last week.

Those people who are waiting to go on booked holidays will also have to cancel their travel plans as Spain is hit by another outbreak. 

MailOnline has approached the Foreign Office for comment.

The new quarantine being imposed on inbound tourists from Spain will also impact on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s drive to get Britons to ‘go back into work if they can’.

In a shift from the government’s ‘work from home if you can’ edict, the Prime Minister suggested people should return to the office if it is ‘safe’.

However, with many people returning from Spain set to be stuck indoors because of the two-week quarantine, it will be impossible for many people currently holidaying in Spain to follow the new guidelines.

There are also fears that France could be the next country hit by a second wave of the virus.

With signs from Spain over the past week suggesting that the country was being hit by a second wave of coronavirus, the decision to impose a quarantine tonight has been met by questions as to why it was not put in place sooner. 

Rory Boland tweeting to say: ‘Why on earth was this decision not taken 48hrs ago, when it was clear there was a problem with Spain, and before tens of thousands of UK holidaymakers flew out on Friday as the summer hols started?’

 This come after King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain donned facemasks during a mass as part of their tour of the country.

The royal couple were pictured this morning at a mass to mark the Day of Galicia at the church of San Martino Pinario in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.

It comes as Spain recorded 2,255 more coronavirus cases in 24 hours and Catalonia shut it’s nightclubs down for two weeks amid fears of a second wave.

The Catalan government went ahead with its threat to close discos across the entire region as the number of cases rose to 319,501 yesterday.

Nightclub owners were told they must shut their doors for the next fortnight.

The move comes as Spanish health officials admitted they could be dealing with a second coronavirus wave.

The regions of Catalonia and Aragon are the two worst-affected areas.

Five areas of Spain have now been put into lockdown to curb the spread of the virus; Catalonia, Zaragoza, Pamplona, Totana and A Marina. 

Meanwhile, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain have been travelling around the country to better understand the impact of the virus.

 Barcelona earlier this week said it was reducing the maximum number of people who could use its beaches at any one time from 38,000 to 32,000 as officials urged sun seekers to avoid weekend peak periods.

Last weekend Barcelona residents were asked to stay at home wherever possible as town hall chiefs tried to encourage voluntary quarantine to stem the spread of coronavirus.

Catalan president Quim Torra admitted earlier this week his government was looking at the possibility of ordering the closure of discos across the region of nearly eight million inhabitants.

The move affects all establishments with disco or music hall licences. 

Respected Catalan daily El Periodico said the closure order also affected late-night pubs, although a tweet from regional health chiefs said simply: ‘The opening to the public of discos, music halls and nightspots licenced to put on shows has been suspended across Catalunya.’

Spanish daily El Pais said the two-week ban, introduced at midnight, also applied to hotels with dance floors laying on musical entertainment.

Bars and restaurants in the areas where the highest number of Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in the past few days, including Barcelona city centre and surrounding sleeper towns as well as municipalities in Girona further north including Figueres, have to close by midnight.

French PM Jean Castex has urged the country’s citizens to avoid travelling to Catalonia because of the health situation there.

Josep Maria Argimon, the secretary of Public Health of Catalonia, admitted its health system was facing ‘critical days.’

He added: ‘We’re not in critical days like in March, when our hospital intensive care units were full.

‘Now what’s critical is that people follow all the rules and guidelines to ensure the spread of the virus slows down.’

The Catalan late-night entertainment shutdown follows a path being taken by other regions in Spain, although the Balearic Islands had been the only other one to take the draconian measure ahead of the spike of new cases.

Late-night bars in Murcia have been told they can only serve customers outside who are sat down in places like terraces where social distancing is guaranteed.

In Navarra, which includes the city of Pamplona where the famous Running of the Bulls normally takes place every year, emergency measures are being brought in which will include the closure of nightspots at 2am.

Officials in Madrid also said yesterday they were studying plans to bring in new limitations on the region’s nightlife which would revolve around reductions in the number of people inside and outside bars and clubs at any one time.

A lockdown in the municipality of Totana in Murcia, south east Spain was the result of a Covid-19 outbreak centred on a pub called Dubai.

More than 50 people at the nightspot tested positive for the virus.

Around 30,000 residents are affected by the Totana lockdown, with entry and exit into the municipality banned except in cases of extreme necessity.

Restaurants and bars are only allowed to open outside terrace areas with 50 per cent capacity.

It comes after France told its citizens not to travel to Catalonia. 

Norway has also re-imposed quarantine rules for people arriving from Spain while Britons have been warned that air bridges could be axed at short notice, leaving them vulnerable to two weeks of isolation when they return to the UK. 

Although the UK government kept Spain on its ‘green list’ of countries that do not require quarantines, officials have indicated that this could change without notice if the rise in Spanish cases gets worse. 

Some British holidaymakers are cancelling their trips and TUI has said it will cancel packages to Spain if returning travellers are forced to go into a 14-day quarantine when they return to the UK. 

France and Germany also today announced that all returning travellers will be given a free coronavirus test amid fears that the holiday season is driving a surge in cases on the continent. 

Credit: Daily Mail

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