Editorial Comment:

As we reported yesterday, the Government is already considering modifying the blanket quarantine it imposed on travellers from Spain and elsewhere. It may be possible for someone who tests negative for coronavirus after coming home to limit their isolation to 10 rather than 14 days, which is at least an advance, albeit a modest one. In addition, Lady Vere, the junior transport minister, told the House of Lords that ministers were “certainly looking at” allowing regional restrictions, rather than quarantines for entire countries.

The Spanish government is furious that the Canary Islands and the Balearics have been included in the British measures, despite having far lower rates of infection not only than the mainland, but the UK as well.

Germany has also imposed restrictions on travellers, but only from parts of Spain showing a spike in cases, mainly in the north east, around Catalonia and Aragon. The UK Government has evidently been alarmed by the reports of an increase in cases in holiday areas popular with British tourists. Boris Johnson yesterday said there were signs of a second wave of the virus taking off on the Continent now that the lockdown has been eased.

We know that skiers returning from holidays in the Italian Alps helped seed the virus in the winter, and the scientific advisers have convinced ministers not to take the same risk again. But, as we have observed before, in the absence of a vaccine, which may be months away if one is ever developed, the world will have to learn to live with Covid-19 without locking down or shutting up shop every time there is a spike in cases.

To that end, the Government is right to examine alternatives to a blanket approach, but it needs to communicate its thinking more openly so that people understand the rationale behind specific measures.

Why, for instance, are we not adopting the sort of mandatory testing system soon to be introduced at German airports for all people returning from high-risk areas? Advisers say such a regime would make no difference since infected arrivals will not show signs of the disease if it was contracted a few days previously.

But all these ideas need to be explored, and urgently, if there is to be any chance not only of salvaging people’s summer holidays, but of saving the travel industry from disaster.