New York, Dec 24 (IANS): Anybody visiting or returning to New York City during the upcoming holiday season will be subject to mandatory quarantine and a $1,000 fine if not followed, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced.

All passengers entering the city via airports will be issued a Department of Health (DOH) commissioner's order to quarantine for two weeks, and the order will come through certified mail, Xinhua news agency quoted the Mayor as saying in his announcement on Wednesday.

By such orders, the city intends to step up quarantine enforcement on foreign travellers, particularly those coming from the UK, over concerns about the fast-spreading new mutant Covid-19 variant recently discovered on Britain, he added.

Any passengers coming from the UK will be personally served the commissioner's order by the Sheriff's Office.

"We need people not to travel, but if they do, we are going to be very, very stringent about the rules," he said during a press briefing.

In addition, the city has also planned to dispatch sheriff's deputies to the home or hotel of "every single traveller coming in from the UK" to confirm that they're abiding by the quarantine.

Failing to comply could result in fines of up to $1,000 dollars.

Meanwhile, travellers will be met at airports, train stations and bus depots by sheriff's deputies and other city officials who will present them with forms and mandatory quarantine orders upon arrival, which will set the monitoring and enforcement process in motion.

The Mayor said that the city is "working closely" with the state government and Port Authority to enforce its quarantine order, but noted that the city itself has the power to be "very aggressive" in ensuring people follow it.

On Wednesday, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Wednesday announced that more areas of the East and South East of England will be put into Tier Four restrictions, the highest level, while revealing that two cases of another new variant of the novel coronavirus have been identified in Britain.