Travel quarantine is 'completely useless' says leading scientist
The Government’s controversial travel quarantine is “completely useless” and should be “dropped as soon as possible”, a world leading epidemiologist has claimed.
Professor Peter Piot, the director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on Sunday joined a growing list of MPs, scientists and business leaders calling for Boris Johnson to ditch the policy.
Discussing the effectiveness of the blanket travel restrictions, which require all overseas arrivals to isolate for 14 days, Prof Piot said the move would only have “made sense at the very beginning, before we had cases.”
He added that due to the UK’s relatively high infection rates, the quarantine would “not contribute much” towards suppressing the coronavirus and was simply inflicting “enormous” damage to the economy.
It came as Ryanair resumed flights 10 days ahead of schedule in response to Spain lifting restrictions on British tourists, with the first plane departing to Alicante on Sunday afternoon from East Midlands Airport.
The budget airline had been due to restart flights on July 1, but has now confirmed that it will accelerate its plans despite the quarantine remaining in place.
Separately, Tui also confirmed that it would resume its holiday programme within three weeks, stating that it had “absolute confidence” that travel restrictions will have been relaxed by then.
The UK's biggest tour operator announced it will serve eight destinations across Spain and Greece from July 11, with holidays available in Crete, Rhodes, Kos, Corfu, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Majorca and Ibiza.
The Daily Telegraph understands that ministers are now planning to announce a series of travel corridors, also known as “air bridges”, before the quarantine is due to be reviewed on June 29.
It is hoped that an announcement can be made before the end of this week, although a date has not been finalised.
The deals, which will enable quarantine-free travel to and from partner countries, are expected to be limited to a number of short-haul European destinations initially, with restrictions remaining in place elsewhere.
However Prof Piot, who co-discovered Ebola and was a lead researcher on Aids, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show the quarantine policy should be scrapped entirely.
He added: “There are..measures that are completely useless like quarantine for returning travellers. That only would have made sense at the beginning when we had no cases, but indeed they were imported.
"That's not going to contribute much and the damage it's going to cause the country, the economy, will be enormous, so let's hope that rule is dropped as soon as possible and we concentrate on what works."
While the Government says quarantine is necessary to prevent the virus being reimported into the UK from other countries, ministers have admitted that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Emergencies (Sage) was not asked to sign off on the decision.
When arriving in the UK, passengers are currently required to provide their contact and travel details, as well as the address they will isolate at.
Fines of up to £1,000 apply in England if a police spot check finds that people are not complying with the regulations, although to date none have been issued.
Critics argue that the policy is counterintuitive, as the prevalence of the disease remains much higher in the UK than in many other countries, particularly in Europe.
Business leaders have also warned that the policy is having a devastating impact on the aviation and tourism industries, with the Centre for Economic and Business research placing the cost to the UK economy at £650m a week.
