France has vowed to reciprocate a quarantine ruling implemented by the UK on passengers returning from the country. 

On Thursday evening the UK government announced that people returning from France after 04:00 BST on Saturday will have to quarantine for a period of 14 days.

Over the past seven days, France has recorded more than 10,800 new cases of COVID-19 and is averaging almost 2,000 new cases per day, compared with 1,000 per day three weeks ago.

The news has thrown holidaymakers' plans into disarray, with thousands cancelling their bookings, while others face a race against time to return to the UK before the measures begin.  

There are currently 160,000 UK citizens in France, but many won't be able to return in time, with channel tunnel trains fully booked until Saturday and flight prices soaring to £460 ($602).

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The French government has greeted the news with dismay, with the country's secretary of state for European affairs, Clement Beaune, posting an immediate response on Twitter.

He tweeted: "The British decision is one that we regret and which will lead to a measure of reciprocity. We're hoping for a return to normal as soon as possible."

French politician, Anne-Laure Cattelot, replied to Beaune's tweet with a scathing attack on the UK and said the measures were unnecessary and short-sighted.

She tweeted: "Deplorable .... yet another measure taken on a whim, when many French compatriots are in the UK and vice versa in compliance with the health measures taken by each country. At times, it seems to me the UK is far away from the EU."

Despite that criticism, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has defended his stance and says measures are necessary to minimize the risk of importing further cases. 

He said: "We can't be remotely complacent about our own situation. Everybody understands that in a pandemic you don't allow your population to be re-infected or the disease to come back in."

Grant Shapps, the UK's transport minister, echoed Johnson's message in an interview with the BBC on Friday morning.

He said: "We've worked so hard in this country to get our level of infections down, the last thing we want do is to have people returning and bringing the infection with them. It's to protect everybody."

As well as France, the UK's quarantine ruling also applies to passengers returning from the Netherlands, Malta, Monaco, Turks and Caicos and Aruba.

Check out our new six-part podcast series Notes on a Pandemic as CGTN Europe finds out how business, science and people have risen to the challenge of COVID-19.