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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots and Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and James Versafe.

So I've had confirmation from the government that all international passengers will soon have to test negative for COVID before travelling into the UK.

This will be a PCR test up to 72 hours before leaving the country they're in.

James, before, I suppose we get into the details of this,

what the trigger appears to be,

given that this has been a topic the government has been criticised

for not doing enough on for some time.

It's the concern over new strains, particularly the South African strain,

and what that means for

the vaccine. So is this why the government is moving now? Because we know that when it comes

to open borders or I suppose the lack of paperwork or test people have to do an arrival here,

the government have been criticised for some time. Yes, the government has not moved quickly on this.

I think you're right that the reason that they have now relented and agreed that people

will have to have this negative PCR test is this concern over new variants.

But even today, Grant Shaps was saying that basically the isolation period after people

arrive for quarantine is a bigger

contributor to the fight against the virus than the PCR test because the PCR test

mainly means that you don't have it when you take the test. It doesn't mean that you don't

...