May backs campaign for airport virus tests
The former prime minister has warned that the UK is lagging behind other countries on the measure
Theresa May yesterday threw her weight behind calls led by The Daily
Telegraph to bring in airport Covid-19 testing, as she warned that the UK was now “lagging behind” the rest of the world. Endorsing the central tenet of this newspaper’s Test4travel campaign, the former PM said testing travellers on arrival and again a few days later was the key to getting planes flying again. Her appeal came as ministers reimposed quarantine on Portugal three weeks after lifting it.
THERESA MAY yesterday threw her weight behind calls led by The Daily Telegraph for the introduction of airport Covid-19 testing, as she warned that the UK was now “lagging behind” the rest of the world.
Endorsing the central tenet of this newspaper’s Test4travel campaign, the former PM said testing travellers on arrival and again a few days later was the key to getting planes flying again to help revive the economy.
She said her “simple” message to Boris Johnson was: “If you want to get the economy moving, get planes flying again. If you want to get planes flying again, give our airports permission to trial tests.
“Stop the UK dragging its feet. Let’s lead the world and set the standard to restore world travel and world trade.” Her appeal came as ministers reimposed quarantine on Portugal just three weeks after lifting it, forcing holidaymakers who fail to return by 4am tomorrow to self-isolate. The Portuguese islands of Madeira and the Azores remain exempt in the first use of the new “island corridor” strategy.
Hungary, French Polynesia and Reunion are also added to the quarantine list, but Sweden, which has refused to lock down throughout the pandemic, has been added to the “safe” travel list after seeing its seven-day case rate tumble to 10.8 per 100,000.
Amid growing backbench concern over the UK’S on-off quarantining of countries, Ms May told MPS: “I’m certain that testing has to be the way forward in the foreseeable future, but at the moment airports aren’t even permitted to trial tests on passengers.
“I think this is an incredibly important point – far from leading the world, the UK is lagging behind.”
She said some 30 countries including Japan, Germany, France, Austria and Iceland all had testing that could reduce or remove 14-day quarantine.
“We have to see testing introduced in our airports and they’re not talking about a single test to abandon all quarantine, but possibly a test on arrival, a test a few days later to reduce the quarantine period,” she added.
She suggested the Department for Transport (DFT) “gets this” but indicated there was a split with other departments and No 10.
Chris Grayling, the former transport secretary, said there was “absolutely no reason” why a regime of trial testing could not be introduced “in a few days” for popular routes.
He said: “It is vitally important not just that we get short-haul flights moving again, but that we open up transatlantic routes that are so fundamentally important to the industry.
“And we can only do that through testing. I cannot understand why we are not at the very least trialling testing on a number of routes to demonstrate where the issues are.” Heathrow has built a testing facility but is still awaiting Government backing for the trial. Paul Maynard, the former transport minister, suggested the UK should learn from Italy, where a negative coronavirus test is obligatory before a flight.
“Passengers check in half an hour early as they do in Italy at the moment, if they test positive, they’re not allowed to board.
“That stops the importation virus into the UK,” he said.
The Airport Operators’ Association (AOA) yesterday wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to go ahead with testing and follow other European nations like Germany and France in underwriting airports’ losses for a period until the sector could be reopened.