Travellers to Manchester from Tier 4 areas ‘should isolate ten days’

Anyone who has travelled to Manchester from any Tier 4 area or Wales should isolate for ten days even if they don’t have Covid symptoms, health officials have warned.      

Greater Manchester’s 10 Directors of Public Health issued the guidance on Monday evening after vast swathes of the south east were locked into new restrictions following the discovery of the new mutant Covid strain. 

The isolation period should start from December 19 and visitors must remain indoors in the property where they are currently staying.  

Other people who live in the house do not need to isolate unless anyone gets symptoms, but no visitors should be allowed in that house at all, even on Christmas Day.   

Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy, director of public health in Tameside, said: ‘The new strain of Covid, which is increasingly rapidly in tier four areas, is extremely worrying. 

‘It is incredibly infectious and if you come into contact with someone with this strain you are far more likely to catch it than the original strain.

‘We are so concerned about the potential grave impact of this that we have taken the difficult decision to ask anyone who has travelled here for Christmas from any tier four area or Wales to act as if they have this new variant, even if they have no symptoms, and self-isolate for at least 10 days. 

‘Other people in the house do not need to self isolate but no visitors should be allowed in that house at all, even on Christmas Day.’

She added that they are asking people to follow the same rules households have done when schoolchildren have been asked to isolate after coming in contact with someone who is positive. 

The individual is the only one who needs to isolate, but if, during that time, anyone in the house gets symptoms, they must all isolate and the person with symptoms get a test straight away.

It comes after thousands of people left London over the weekend to get home to their families for Christmas after the city and surrounding areas were plunged into Tier 4. 

It comes as: 

• Britons could be facing a shortage of food over the festive period with the port chaos caused by France’s Covid travel ban set to last until Christmas Eve and Emmanuel Macron insisting lorry drivers must register a negative Covid test before being allowed into the country;
• Number 10 has called for calm as panic-buyers continue to queue outside supermarkets across the country – but Sainsbury’s has reassured customers that all the ingredients needed for a traditional Christmas dinner are already in the country;
• Boris Johnson is facing a mounting Tory rebellion over his latest Covid crackdown as Conservative MPs demand the Government recall Parliament so ministers can ‘come clean’ over the new mutant strain of the disease, which a top German virologist claimed he was ‘not so worried’ about; 
• Chaos erupted at British airports, with more than 30,000 travellers stranded and hundreds of flights cancelled as more countries moved to isolate the UK in a desperate bid to contain the mutated strain of coronavirus;
• The mutated coronavirus spreading rapidly in the UK will likely become the dominant global strain, a SAGE scientist warned today as Gibraltar became the fifth place outside of Britain to confirm a case of the new variant;
• The FTSE 100 plunged further into the red, losing more than £45billion in value as panicked investors reacted to the devastating economic threat of a toughened lockdown, the new coronavirus strain and the continued Brexit deadlock;   
• The temporary purpose-built NHS Nightingale hospitals constructed for £220million to help fight the coronavirus pandemic cannot open because there are not enough staff to adequately service them, doctors have warned.

It comes as Britain’s second wave of Covid is continuing to worsen, with health bosses today recording another 33,364 cases of the disease amid fears a mutated strain of the disease is rapidly spreading across the country.

Department of Health statistics show daily infections have risen 64.7 per cent in a week, with today’s figure up from the 20,263 posted last Monday. 

Deaths are still stable, however, with today’s fatality count being 7.3 per cent down on last week’s 232. 

It comes amid growing fears that millions of families face living under draconian Tier Four restrictions until Easter, with Britain’s Covid crisis continuing to escalate. 

Boris Johnson sparked fury on Saturday night after he cancelled Christmas for 16million people living in London and across the South East. 

Shops, gyms, hairdressers and beauty salons have been ordered to shut again, with residents told not to leave Tier Four.  

Matt Hancock yesterday hinted tougher measures will be needed even after Christmas for the rest of the country, saying the disease was now ‘out of control’ and repeating warnings about the Covid mutation that No10’s advisers claim is behind the rapid spread. ‘Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson claimed the harshest curbs may ‘possibly’ have to stay until the spring, when millions of Brits will have received their jab.   

MailOnline today revealed that parts of the nation which escaped the harshest measures have seen a dramatic rise in positive tests since the start of December, bolstering fears Number 10 will need to take tougher action after Christmas to tackle the new variant of Covid.  

Crawley in Sussex saw cases rise almost five-fold since the beginning of the month, with the borough’s infection rate soaring from 40.9 positive tests per 100,000 people in the week ending December 1 to 200.2 over the seven-day spell that finished December 15.