People in the United Kingdom are being told to stay at home and to not travel to remote communities, amid growing worries in the regions over the spread of coronavirus.
Fiona Hyslop, Scotland’s tourism secretary, told the BBC that tourists could “compromise the health” of people living in rural areas, including the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
Tourism businesses along one Scottish road, the A830 which runs from Fort William to Mallaig, have also urged people to stay away.
The Road To The Isles group, which is made up of 100 tourism businesses along the route, said that “vital services” in the area are “struggling to cope with demand,” according to PA Media news agency.
The area has just one doctor and one ambulance serving an ageing population. In a statement on its website, Visit Scotland asked everyone “not to travel to or around Scotland.”
People were also discouraged from traveling to Cornwall, a county in western England. A joint statement issued by Cornwall Council and the tourism site Visit Cornwall on Friday urged people planning a trip to the county to “consider deferring their visit.”
Steve Double, the Conservative MP for St Austell and Newquay in Cornwall, told Sky News on Saturday: “Please do not travel to Cornwall, we do not want to spread this virus any further.”
Elsewhere, Snowdonia National Park in Wales experienced its “busiest ever visitor day” on Saturday with people flouting guidance on social distancing, according to its website.
“We are calling on the Prime Minister and the First Minister of Wales to provide stronger measures on unnecessary travel and social distancing, to ensure that we do not see a repeat of yesterday’s scenes across Snowdonia,” Emyr Williams, chief executive of the Snowdonia National Park Authority, said in a statement on Sunday.
