Thou­sands of truck dri­vers are wait­ing in the bor­der region of Kent on the Christ­mas hol­i­days — because the French gov­ern­ment closed the bor­der with Great Britain for fear of a mutat­ed vari­ant of the coro­na virus. A solu­tion will be launched in the mid­dle of the week, there was plen­ty of trou­ble. After thou­sands of neg­a­tive coro­na rapid tests in the Kent bor­der region, most truck dri­vers were able to cross the bor­der into France after stand­ing still for days. “In the mean­time, 15,526 # coro­n­avirus tests have been car­ried out,” tweet­ed British Trans­port Min­is­ter Grant Shapps on Sat­ur­day after­noon. “Only 36 pos­i­tive results that will now be ver­i­fied.” Only dri­vers with a neg­a­tive Coro­na test result are cur­rent­ly allowed to cross the bor­der from Eng­land to France by sea or through the tun­nel because of a mutat­ed virus vari­ant. The closed Manston air­field, where the dri­vers were wait­ing in their trucks for the tests, is now emp­ty and should no longer be used, Shapps said. On Fri­day evening, around 3,000 trucks were still stand­ing in a traf­fic jam, by Sat­ur­day morn­ing half of them would have left the port, accord­ing to the Min­istry of Trans­port. Traf­fic is slow­ly return­ing to normal.

Pol­ish sol­diers in Eng­land, thou­sands of truck dri­vers are still stuck

Many of the dri­vers had been wait­ing on the motor­way in front of the Eng­lish Chan­nel for days and had to spend most of the Christ­mas days in their cabs. France had com­plete­ly closed its bor­der because of a coro­n­avirus vari­ant new­ly dis­cov­ered in Great Britain, pos­si­bly even more con­ta­gious. On Wednes­day, Lon­don and Paris agreed on the reopen­ing — on the con­di­tion that all dri­vers com­ing from Eng­land are test­ed before cross­ing to the continent.

“Dif­fi­cult Christmas”

How­ev­er, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the logis­tics indus­try warned on Sat­ur­day not to take a deep breath. “It’s not over yet,” said Dun­can Buchanan of the Road Haulage Asso­ci­a­tion, accord­ing to the PA news agency. Many dri­vers had post­poned their trips due to the sit­u­a­tion and would queue up again in the com­ing days. More than 1000 forces from the British Army as well as French fire fight­ers and med­ical teams from Poland had helped to test as many dri­vers as pos­si­ble in a short time. They also pro­vid­ed those wait­ing with food pack­ages and drinks. Sev­er­al aid orga­ni­za­tions also helped the strand­ed with essen­tials. Many dri­vers had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained that they had run out of water and food. There weren’t enough toi­lets either. Accord­ing to the Ger­man ambas­sador in Lon­don, Andreas Michaelis, some Ger­man dri­vers were also stuck in the chaos on the hol­i­days. “This is a dif­fi­cult Christ­mas,” wrote Michaelis on Twit­ter. British oppo­si­tion MP Bar­ry Sheer­man crit­i­cized: “Thou­sands of truck dri­vers are strand­ed in Dover in dire cir­cum­stances and nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter nor any oth­er cab­i­net mem­ber has the courage to pay them a vis­it on Christ­mas Day. Shame on you,” wrote the Labor politi­cian on Twitter .

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