LONDON: Britain is urgently reviewing its social distancing rule and might be able to relax quarantine for travellers to help its economy recover from a COVID-19 crisis collapse, the country's finance minister Rishi Sunak said.
"It's important that we look at it comprehensively, in the round, and that's what we will do urgently," Sunak told Sky News about the social distancing rule, adding that preliminary work had already begun.Reducing the distance people must keep apart from each other would mean three quarters of pubs could reopen, rather than about one third with a two-metre rule.
Sunak said he would reopen the economy"slowly and safely", starting with the retail sector this week, and he hoped the hospitality sector would follow in early July. Sunak said he wanted to encourage companies to hire workers and there needed to be more skills training, while higher levels of household savings represented a positive for the economy.