Holidaymakers scramble to leave South Africa to avoid quarantine
HUNDREDS of British tourists face a desperate rush to get back home from South Africa before hotel quarantine becomes mandatory.
Holidaymakers were left desperately trying to book indirect flights from the country and five surrounding African nations to arrive back before the rules come into force at 4am tomorrow.
The travel restrictions have been imposed because of alarm over a new Covid variant discovered in South Africa this week that scientists fear could be more contagious and vaccine resistant to previous strains.
On Thursday the Government announced that direct flights would be suspended from South Africa as well as Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini (Swaziland), Zimbabwe and Namibia from midday yesterday until Sunday.
In that period, the mothballed hotel quarantine system is being set back up, and from 4am on Sunday people who have been in those countries in the last 10 days will have to pay over £2,000 per adult to isolate at a government-sanctioned facility for 10 days.
However, ministers have ruled that travellers who arrive back in the UK from those countries before Sunday can self-isolate at home instead of a hotel.
One couple told The Daily Telegraph that they were resigned to losing “half their savings” to quarantine costs after being caught out by the ban.
Jessica Dickson, 33, who is staying at a hotel in Johannesburg with her husband Michael, 38, and 16-month-old daughter Amelia Rose, said other British guests had managed to book last minute flights home with three connections to dodge hotel quarantine.
But the couple from Surrey, whose Friday flight home was cancelled in the wake of the ban, were struggling to get indirect flights with multiple changeovers.
The pair, who have lived in the UK for the past 10 years, had flown out last week for their first trip to their native South Africa since the pandemic so their daughter could meet her family for the first time. Mrs Dickson said: “We are desperate to get home as from our perspective we are like, ‘Fine, we are going to have to do hotel quarantine’. It is going to take half of our savings to do it, including the £5,000 flight, which is not a small chunk of change.
“But the sooner we can get there the sooner we can do our time and the sooner we can get out.”
Elsewhere, two Welsh rugby teams, the Cardiff and Scarlets clubs, were left stranded in South Africa after flying out for a tour. The clubs assured worried families that they were “making every effort” to get the players back home.
Meanwhile, travel experts warned passengers could still get round the hotel quarantine rules by extending their holidays in non-red list countries beyond the 10-day period they need to declare they were in South Africa.
Paul Charles, chief executive of the travel consultancy The PC Agency, said: “It may cause people to launder their status in other countries for two weeks before they come back to the UK.
“That is what people did earlier in the pandemic. I wouldn’t rush home for hotel quarantine. I would rather spend 10 days in a European country that has not cut off South Africa.”
However, holidaymakers using such a loophole are facing shrinking options, as yesterday the EU Commission urged member states to place restrictions on arrivals after a case of the new variant was discovered in Belgium.