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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm Isabel Hardman and I'm joined by James

Forsythe and Katie Balls. Well, the government's COVID-O committee is meeting this week to

discuss potential further controls on borders. And there are also

rumours swirling that schools aren't going to return until after Easter. It's all looking

pretty cheery this Monday morning. James, tell us a little bit about the debates within government

over further border restrictions.

So the COVID-day committee, as you said as well, we'll meet tomorrow.

And I think it is inevitable that we will see a further tightening up of the borders.

So I think the only thing really left in debate is whether everyone should have to

quarantine in a hotel or kind of other designated facility, or

whether it should only be those people coming from places that are believed to have new

variants in them or a particular coronavirus hotspots. And I think what this reflects is a shift

in the mindset in government. I think it's any coincidence that Israel is also shutting its borders.

And I mean, the point is that as countries make progress on vaccination,

they wish to safeguard that progress against a vaccine-avading variant,

to use the technical term.

And I think that this is going to,

Matt Hancock always talks about this great British summer. But I mean, the emphasis on the

British in that summer is getting stronger and stronger. We've had Kate Bingham, the head of

a vaccine task force basically saying to people, look, I don't know whether you'll get to have a

summer holiday because in terms of going abroad,

...