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When the British Prime Minister addressed the nation on December 20, the news was bad enough: Christmas has been canceled.
Boris Johnson has plunged the country into severe new restrictions, blaming a new variant of the disease that had been spreading in London and south-eastern England since September.
But suddenly things got worse. Country after country have closed their borders to flights from the UK, in an effort to keep the new variant confined to “Plague Island”, as the New York Times doubled it.
With the Channel crossings blocked, trucks carrying goods to the mainland backed up for miles along the highways. Eventually, a local Kent airport was turned into a parking lot for 4,000 trucks. Nothing could enter the UK either. It was, the wags said, a taste of what a no-deal Brexit would be like.
This no-deal was avoided – the government signed an agreement with the EU on December 24. But the crisis is far from over.
British travelers are still banned in much of the world – including EU countries – due to the local variant.
And although the UK was the first country in the world to launch a vaccine rollout, its good news was marred by the January 13 report that the death toll from Covid-19 had exceeded 100,000. Two more days later the government later announced it was cutting the remaining “travel corridors”.
Inbound travel is a lucrative business for the UK – before Covid, Visit Britain predicted that 2020 would see 32.3 million visitors inject £ 24.7 billion ($ 33.6 billion) into the economy.
In the end, 2020 saw a 76% drop in the number of visitors and an 80% drop. The tourist board is forecasting 16.9 million visits and £ 9 billion ($ 12.2 billion) in spending for 2021: just 41% and 32% of 2019 figures respectively. But that’s, of course, if people come. After all, who would want to vacation on “Plague Island”?
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