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The BBC’s Political Editor grilled the Health Secretary on whether the UK could have implemented stricter coronavirus restrictions sooner. Matt Hancock stated that the Government already had a ban on direct travel into the UK from Brazil in place.<\/p>\n
Ms Kuenssberg said: “Someone carrying the Brazilian variant was able to disappear weeks after the variant was first detected because the Government had not got round to introducing quarantine hotels.<\/p>\n
“Do you believe that the delay will have put people at risk?”<\/p>\n
Mr Hancock replied: “The answer is no, we had quarantine already in place.<\/p>\n
“In fact, we had already put in place a ban on direct travel from Brazil.<\/p>\n
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“Also, those who are not citizens or residents here could not come.<\/p>\n
“All the evidence is that the five cases that we know about followed those quarantine rules.<\/p>\n
“I hope that is very reassuring to people.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “There is no evidence that the sixth case did not follow those quarantine rules.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We need to obviously get in contact with the person.<\/p>\n
“This positive test was on February 12 or 13 and we have not seen any other further knock-on transmissions in the data that we obviously monitor very closely.”<\/p>\n
The Health Secretary added: “All of that points to the work that has been done and the system that was in place has managed to control this.”<\/p>\n
“Obviously, since then we have introduced further and stricter measures, the hotel quarantine as you mentioned, to strengthen the system further.”<\/p>\n