Britain yesterday began mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals from high-risk countries as New Zealand identified its first cases of the UK strain from the outbreak that forced its largest city into lockdown.

British officials introduced mandatory hotel quarantine rules for arrivals from dozens of countries deemed "high risk" for coronavirus variants, in a bid to stop new strains spreading.

All UK citizens and permanent residents entering England from 33 countries on a wider travel ban list must self-isolate at their own expense in approved hotels for 10 days and take several Covid-19 tests.

Arriving travellers caught lying about being in one of those countries 10 days before their journey could receive up to 10 years in prison -- a penalty already criticised as excessive.

"It can't be easy for them to be in a bedroom for 10 days,"  Charlie Islam-Harry, manager of the St Giles Heathrow hotel, told AFP. Her staff will carry out regular welfare checks on guests during their enforced stays, she promised.

Two coronavirus infections that prompted a snap lockdown of Auckland in New Zealand's were caused by the more contagious variant first detected in the UK, the country's health ministry said yesterday.

They had no link to any other positive cases detected so far in New Zealand.

"This result reinforces the decision to take swift and robust action around the latest cases to detect and stamp out the possibility of any further transmission," the ministry said.

The coronavirus has killed at least 2,400,543 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP yesterday.

Nearly 172 million vaccine doses have been given in at least 96 countries or territories. But most of those doses have gone to the richer countries.

A shipment of 200,000 doses of China's Sinopharm vaccine arrived yesterday in Zimbabwe -- a donation from the Beijing government.