Pre-flight Covid rules for England ‘too little too late’
MPs AND EXPERTS CRITICISE MINISTERS FOR NOT TAKING ACTION SOONER TO CONTAIN VIRUS
NEW coronavirus rules for travellers to England are not tough enough compared to measures implemented in other countries including India, according to experts and MPs.
From Monday (18), everyone arriving by boat, train or plane have to test negative for Covid-19 before they can enter the UK. They also have to take a Covid test up to 72 hours before leaving their country of departure. However, some people are exempt, including hauliers and under-11s.
The rule was supposed to be in force from last Friday (15) but was delayed by the government. However, similar rules have been in place in many parts of Europe for months.
In India, arrivals are subject to medical screening along with a 14-day quarantine if a person tests positive. Under revised rules, air passengers from the UK have had to shield for seven days even if they tested negative, and had further Covid tests on arrival in Delhi.
Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a senior epidemiology lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, told Eastern Eye: “Pretravel testing is welcome, but it’s important this is carried out with high sensitivity tests, for example PCR tests.
“Also, these should not be seen as replacements for quarantine. We know that transmission can, and has occurred even with negative pre-travel testing, and import of infections and new variants can only be prevented with quarantine.
“The UK measures for quarantine don’t go far enough. These were reduced from 14 to 10 days – a change that is not supported by scientific evidence.
“The UK should adopt managed quarantine for 14 days irrespective of test results, in line with practice in other countries, such as New Zealand.”
Britain has been criticised for being one of the few countries during the Covid crisis with no mandatory temperature checks or coronavirus testing at airports.
Almost one in every 660 people in the UK have died from Covid or related causes so far. The UK has one of the worst coronavirus mortality rates in the world at 151 per 100,000 people, ahead of the US, Spain and Mexico. The death toll in the UK reached 91,470 while the figure in India was 152,556 as Eastern Eye went to press on Tuesday (19).
Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrats MP for Twickenham in London, told Eastern Eye: “Yet again the Tories have been painfully slow to act on travel restrictions, and they still haven’t been clear on how they will implement new measures.
“Other countries have had rigorous measures in place early and this has had proven results.
“It is unbelievable that you can still freely enter the UK from South Africa and Brazil despite reports of worrying new strains of Covid spreading there.”
Tougher Covid measures in other nations include Bahrain having a test on arrival at airports with the results within 12 hours. It involves a 20-minute process including registration and nasal swab and a vaccine registration online with free of charge appointments within three days offering the Sinopharm or Pfizer jab.
Kirit Masrani, an airport services manager in the UK, said: “In my opinion, the government should close boarders and stop air travel totally for at least two weeks, apart from cargo movements.
“This should have happened in the first lockdown. Other countries did it.”
Zarah Sultana, a Labour MP for Coventry South in the Midlands, believes the government’s handling of the pandemic has been “appalling”.
She said: “We could be living relatively normal lives again, as people are in New Zealand and in Vietnam right now, if only our government had acted early and taken the necessary measures to contain the virus properly.
“This isn’t the benefit of hindsight– the right answers were clear at the time, but the government ignored those of us calling for them. It has sent all the wrong signals and has consistently been too slow to act, even ignoring the pleas of its own scientists and many MPs.
“Now Britain is truly the sick man of Europe, with the virus running rampant. Much of this suffering was avoidable.”
Asked why more than 11 months after the first Covid case in the UK, border testing had still not been introduced, Home Office minister Victoria Atkins said there was a “very delicate balancing act” when deciding on travel restrictions.
Atkins said: “We have had a series of travel restrictions; indeed the quarantine restrictions have been in force for some time. There’s a very delicate balancing act between controlling the virus and ensuring we are not putting too much of a burden on the economy.”
She added: “We have listened to the concerns that many people had about whether the message has quite got through to people who are making the flights over
the weekend, and we have acted in relation to those concerns.”
Transport secretary Grant Shapps said the new measures were delayed in order “to give international arrivals time to prepare passengers”.
Last Sunday (17), the government said it was looking at requiring all incoming travellers to isolate in hotels.
All arrivals to the UK will have to quarantine and show negative tests for Covid-19 from Monday (18) at 0400 GMT. The move comes after the government scrapped “travel corridors” from countries with lower caseloads following the emergence of new strains.
The Sunday Times (17) said the government planned to go further, emulating countries such as Australia and New Zealand in requiring travellers to self-isolate
in hotels at their own cost, and using GPS and facial recognition technology to check they are staying put.
“There is a challenge of its workability, its deliverability, but we need to look at that very carefully based on the experience of other countries,” foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC.
“There will be checks at home, there will be checks at the border. I think that is the most effective measure we can take at this point in time,” he said.
“Obviously we’ll keep other potential measures under review. But they’ve got to be workable.”
The measures taking effect from Monday come after Britain banned all arrivals from South America and Portugal last Friday over fears of importing a new coronavirus variant from Brazil.