Holidaymakers braced for new quarantine restrictions

Pressure is mounting on England to consider imposing quarantine rules on travellers arriving from Greece amid reports of people returning with coronavirus.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said a decision on whether to impose restrictions on the countries would be announced on Friday.

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Rising Covid cases prompted the Scottish Government to announce travellers from Greece would have to self-isolate for 14 days from Thursday, while Wales began asking arrivals from the island of Zante to enter quarantine.

The UK’s biggest tour operator TUI has suspended its holidays to the resort of Laganas on Zante.

But Greece has insisted it is doing ‘everything in our power’ to keep UK holidaymakers safe.

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It comes as rising cases in Portugal were prompting many UK tourists to pay hundreds of pounds to fly home before Saturday.

In recent weeks, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced changes to its quarantine exemption list on Thursday nights, with the new rules being imposed on Saturdays at 4am.

In Portugal, the seven-day coronavirus cases rate is 22.7, compared with 14.2 for the previous week.

A seven-day rate of 20 is the threshold above which the UK Government has considered triggering quarantine conditions.

There were 14.3 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in Greece in the seven days to September 1, up from 14.1 a week earlier and a similar rate to the UK.

Tour operator TUI also said it was aware of a “small number” of positive Covid-19 test results following a flight from Heraklion in Crete to London Stansted on August 27.

One passenger on the flight, who had been contacted by NHS Test and Trace and asked to self-isolate, complained that “hardly anyone” on the flight had been wearing a mask.

The woman told the PA news agency: “Our flight was hideous, hardly anyone wore a mask and the crew didn’t do anything about it."

A TUI spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that no guests tested positive for Covid-19 in our hotels and no symptoms were displayed before or during the flight home by any of the customers.”