Travel quarantine could be cut to 7 days
AIR passengers could be released from quarantine after only seven days under a ‘trailblazing’ plan to revive the crippled travel industry, the Transport Secretary said yesterday.
Ministers are also looking at proposals to test and self-isolate holidaymakers before they travel back to the UK – doing away with the need to quarantine entirely.
Details of the Government’s long-awaited air passenger testing plan emerged in a speech by Grant Shapps to the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) conference.
Although Mr Shapps promised to turn Britain into a ‘trailblazer’ on testing, he warned that new spikes in Covid infections could lead to ‘wider restrictions’ that could cause ‘even more pain for the travel industry’. He told the virtual conference: ‘We’re proposing a domestic test regime, where people land and wait a week, have a test and get early release.
‘We’re also proposing an internationally recognised system, in which Britain would be a trailblazer, where tests and isolation take place prior to travel and after travel and would require no quarantine.’ But he added: ‘From the very start, we’ve had to be cautious. Because, as we know, new Covid spikes risk wider restrictions down the line – ultimately, even more pain for travel firms.’
The Daily Mail’s Get Britain Flying Again campaign has been calling for air passenger testing to save jobs and rescue the wounded travel industry. Industry leaders have accused the Government of lagging behind dozens of European countries.
The Department for Transport (DfT) established a taskforce to explore options for testing, but travel bosses have criticised the slow progress and fear thousands of jobs will be lost by the time the taskforce reports back in early November. There was fresh fury yesterday as it emerged the taskforce membership is made up entirely of government officials. Travel consultant Paul Charles, of The PC Agency, said: ‘If they don’t have real, authentic travel leaders on the taskforce, it will create uproar.’
A BA spokesman said: ‘We need to move to a pre-flight testing regime where travellers arriving in the UK all have a negative test up to 72 hours before flying.’
A DfT spokesman said: ‘The Government is working at pace with industry to identify and implement options to reduce the selfisolation period through testing, while protecting public health.’
TO tackle the travel quarantine fiasco, the Transport Secretary is looking at bringing in a ‘trailblazing’ Covid testing regime.
The aim? To halve the strict self-isolation period for passengers arriving here to seven days. The intention? To repair our economy by breathing new life into ailing tourism, business travel and international trade.
The plan, which could save one million jobs and bolster hopes of winter holidays, is welcome, chiming with this paper’s campaign to Get Britain Flying Again.
But like a bad comedian’s joke, haven’t we heard this one before? From ‘moonshots’ to ‘world beaters’, almost every testing system tried by ministers has flopped.
Meanwhile, after months of dithering, the Government has unveiled an airport-testing taskforce. Farcically, it contains no travel industry experts – just Whitehall penpushers. When 30 countries already have arrival hall screening, such incompetence is intolerable. Ministers are turning Britain into a laughing stock.