UK may take more action to protect borders during COVID crisis -UK PM Johnson

LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Britain may have to implement further measures to protect its borders from new variants of COVID-19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday.

"I really don't rule out that we may need to take further measures still," he told a news briefing.

"We may need to go further to protect our borders because we do not want after all the effort we are going to in this country...to put that at risk by having a new variant come back in," he said.

Britain's current lockdowns ban most international travel while new rules introduced on Monday require a negative pre-departure test for travellers plus a period of quarantine on arrival.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce, writing by James Davey, editing by William James)