THE UK Government is “actively” looking at quarantining all overseas visitors to protect the country from vaccine-busting Covid-19 variants, Boris Johnson has confirmed, as he signalled it would look at the “potential” of relaxing lockdown measures in England from mid-February.

The Prime Minister said the Government was “definitely looking at” the possibility of travellers arriving in the UK being required to quarantine in hotels.

“We have to realise there is at least the theoretical risk of a new variant that is a vaccine-busting variant coming in, we’ve got to be able to keep that under control.”

He pointed out the UKwide vaccination programme had given doses to 6.4 million people and was “on target just” to hit the aim of vaccinating everyone in the four most vulnerable groups by February 14.

“We want to make sure that we protect our population, protect this country against reinfection from abroad,” he declared, noting: “That idea of looking at hotels is certainly one thing we’re actively now working on. We need a solution that gives us the maximum possible protection against reinfection from abroad.”

Cabinet ministers are divided on whether forced quarantine should be imposed on all passengers or only those arriving from countries with new strains of the coronavirus.

The issue is expected to be discussed at the weekly Cabinet meeting tomorrow as it will be at Whitehall’s Covid committee when a final decision is due to be made. A Commons statement is likely to follow.

During a visit to a vaccination centre in north London, Mr Johnson revealed he and colleagues would be “looking at the potential of relaxing some measures” before mid-February south of the border but it is not thought any would be raised before that date.

With pressure mounting from Conservative MPs to reopen schools in England as quickly as possible, the PM stressed that he could not give a guarantee schools would be back before Easter.

“I do think now this massive achievement has been made of rolling out this vaccination programme, people want to see us making sure we don’t throw that away by having a premature relaxation and then another big surge of infection.

“I totally understand the frustrations of parents, I really thank teachers for what they’re doing, the immense efforts they’re going to[in order] to teach kids online and the Government has provided a lot of laptops…I know that’s no substitute for direct face-to-face learning.

“Believe me, there’s nothing I want to do more than reopen schools, I’ve fought to keep schools open for as long as I possibly could.

“We want to see schools back as fast as possible, we want to do that in a way that is consistent with fighting the epidemic and keeping the infection rate down,” he added.