To think the U.K. should have just shut the boarders in March

[Lardlizard]

Surely that would have saved the country millions

We know now that there were cases in France by late December, but we only know that because they went back and tested old samples. Odds are it reached our shores around the same time so yes a March lockdown would have been far too late.

To clarify, a man in France had a swab taken on 27 December which later tested positive for COVID (he was being treated for pneumonia), so he had to have caught it around about 14-22 Dec based on the usual incubation time. He had not travelled outside France but his wife worked at Charles de Gaul Airport so will have been in touch with international travellers.

The first confirmed cases in the U.K. are on 31st Jan but I’d be very dubious about those actually being the first cases based on what we know now.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-daughter-of-uk-man-who-died-from-covid-19-in-january-attacks-china-for-cover-up-12067060

Covid 19 was here this time last year.

The Bejing Olympic team had exactly covid symptoms in August, 2019

Besides which, isn't it too soon to be considering Australia such a success? It's summer there now, they are seeing hot spots again already and it's what happens in flu season that counts.

It was autumn in this part of the world when our lockdowns started, we've already been through winter and flu season - and flu cases were much less than usual because of the covid measures.

So it was around but failed to get going with a superspreader event until the skiing season. Which was one great big event!

I bet it will eventually come out that the ski season was coincidence, or a change in the virus.

Maybe.

But I know of people who did get it and spread it in one case, so admit it does loom large in my reading of events!

Yes, the borders should have been shut - it would have been so easy to keep an island safe. Instead, we've allowed folk to drive, fly and sail in and out.

Idiot PM, idiot government.

Hind sight is wonderful. I did say it myself at the time. However it would have got in whatever, we are an overpopulated island that relys on imports for food and goods. It would have just delayed the inevitable.

Of course they should have. I live in guernsey. We were locked down from mid March to end of May when restrictions were being lifted . There were limited flights but People could always come home (and leave) but they had to quarantine upon arrival. You were fined (£1,000’s) if you broke quarantine. School has been back since June. We have been able to watch Christmas concerts in person the kids have all their clubs back and you struggle to get a table in a restaurant as they are so busy. There are no restrictions for Christmas. IOM are similar. Jersey on the other hand allowed travel in and they have
Over 900 cases (out of about 100k people) we have 3 (60k people and they are all in quarantine) I would say the majority of our food is imported and of course that still continued

Rainandclouds an island of less than 100k people cannot be compared with an island with a population over 60m.

And all those people around the globe who were advised to return to their home country at the beginning, if our borders had been closed, how exactly do you think they would have got back home given the UK is a major transit hub - were we supposed to palm them off as some other countries problem.

I believe other countries allowed repatriation followed by quarantine. China is letting nationals in now with a negative test followed by 2 weeks in quarantine.

‘Shutting borders’ means letting people leave but being v strict on who is allowed in (monitored quarantine). Transit could be done if transiting people are only allowed in specific areas in the airport (and not outside).

If the govt thought it was important, I reckon they could have done it - if not in Mar, then in June when cases were low (ie put rules in place so that people were monitored on return if they decided to go on holiday in summer).

I was in Spain in early March and it was full of busloads of Chinese tourists, when everyone knew then that Covid-19 was going to be a big problem.

Whilst Nicol Sturgeon was pontificating on national tv daily about how people should avoid travel, a quick look on the daily flight log for the Scottish airports showed that a multitude of flights were landing and taking off from international destinations throughout, certainly in July. Not so much now but there was no attempt to shut any borders even then, although the political rhetoric being spouted gave quite a different impression.

Everything was way too late.

Testing was sparse until after the peak of the first wave. We had a patient in March who had been through 6 airports and came to us pretty unwell. We transferred her to the covid pod in a&e and testing was declined as she hadn't been through wuhan or the other few areas of high risk at the time. With hindsight, she was likely to have had it. We did isolate her anyway as I felt it better to be safe.

Yep. Borders should have been shut in January till the summer. No flights in or not unless special reasons. We also should have had a full lockdown with only supermarkets or chemist open. Bojo has handled this so badly and it’s backfired on us massively. I think we’ve got another year or so on lockdown.

@DecemberDiana

So it was around but failed to get going with a superspreader event until the skiing season. Which was one great big event!

It was Chinese New Year in late January. Millions of Chinese went abroad for holidays and millions went in and out of China to visit relatives.

Most introductions into the UK were from Europe according to the genome studies. (If I understood it correctly!)

Wherever the introductions are from it seems only a few cause the majority of follow on cases. So that would seem to imply that border controls would be actually quite an effective control mechanism.