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Covid

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Original poster

Why UK has no proper quarantine?

18 replies

Somewhereelsewhere · 31/12/2020 14:53

Genuine question: why have we never implemented a proper quarantine system for people travelling into UK? 2 weeks in a hotel type thing...

Just trying to understand

OP posts:

summerstorms · 31/12/2020 14:57

because the government suck

blueangel19 · 31/12/2020 15:11

What do you mean? The government advise is to quarantine.

MrsFrisbyMouse · 31/12/2020 15:17

Because our internal numbers are so high it really would make no difference. Those countries doing such a state managed quarantine have little to no in country transmission - they are trying to stop the virus entering their country - we really missed that boat a long time ago.

chipsandpeas · 31/12/2020 15:20

@blueangel19

What do you mean? The government advise is to quarantine.

advised....not enforced, plenty of people not giving a fuck and not quarantining

Haffiana · 31/12/2020 15:20

@Somewhereelsewhere

Genuine question: why have we never implemented a proper quarantine system for people travelling into UK? 2 weeks in a hotel type thing...

Just trying to understand

Because we have higher rates than most countries. People have to quarantine when they LEAVE the UK and enter other countries.

Sorry if that doesn't match your understanding of what constitutes a risk.

CKBJ · 31/12/2020 15:31

This is exactly what should have happened back in Jan/Feb. Those saying there is quarantine advice yes there is but it could be a hell of a lot more stricter. All people into the country put up in hotels close to the airports at the expense of the passenger/company for 14 days. And to be booked and paid for before you arrive. Transported there not, left to make your own way with a message of try and avoid public transport. Tested on arrival at expense of passenger. Those coming through ports a similar process. Back in early Feb we flew back from Rome into Gatwick. Landed at 7pmish and back in car by 730pm!

Pinkcadillac · 31/12/2020 15:38

People must quarantine when they arrive. Whether they comply or not is down to personal responsibility.

I think that enforcing a quarantine in a hotel under police surveillance would only be feasible if you shut your borders and allow only a handful of flights per day for key workers or emergency reasons, like Australia has done.

Haffiana · 31/12/2020 15:39

This is exactly what should have happened back in Jan/Feb... Back in early Feb we flew back from Rome into Gatwick. Landed at 7pmish and back in car by 730pm!

Why didn't you quarantine yourself?

EagleFlight · 31/12/2020 15:39

People are told to quarantine. Right now though, our numbers are out of control anyway.

EagleFlight · 31/12/2020 15:40

@Haffiana

This is exactly what should have happened back in Jan/Feb... Back in early Feb we flew back from Rome into Gatwick. Landed at 7pmish and back in car by 730pm!

Why didn't you quarantine yourself?

Because in early February we still knew very little about the virus and were only told to quarantine it we had flown back from specific places, which didn’t include Rome.

CKBJ · 31/12/2020 15:43

@Haffiana Rome wasn’t a quarantine place then it was only certain places.

AlexaShutUp · 31/12/2020 15:47

We missed the boat on this earlier in the year. DH flew back home from Asia in mid March, and we were amazed that there were no checks, no quarantine requirements, nothing.

Now, our rates are so high as to make quarantining arrivals from other countries pointless.

lljkk · 31/12/2020 15:51

Was done like this, partly, for individuals evacuated from Wuhan (anyone remember? Some place near Liverpool)

Is the system in NZ/Australia something like mix of below

Nation pays for it & puts people in state-allocated hotels, but lottery about who gets back in, plenty of people stranded abroad waiting to win that lottery

Individual pays for it AND lottery about who gets allowed back in and state-allocated hotels.

Fine, really, as long as you & people you care about weren't the ones stranded abroad in February 2020 and still not able to get back to home country.

Original poster

Somewhereelsewhere · 31/12/2020 16:26

Thank you for all the answers.
Sorry for my post wasn’t clear enough.
I meant a proper quarantine. I said like with hotels. Ie. What they do in Australia or Norway for example.
But like @Pinkcadillac said perhaps for this you need restricted flights and the resources from the police etc.

I get that our rates are too high now for it to seem worthwhile. But I still don’t quite understand why we didn’t do it during earlier stages.
I also wonder if it would help now given the declining rates of compliancy, in terms of their being a perception we are doing all we can.

But thank you all for answering

OP posts:

namechange34 · 31/12/2020 16:40

As LJKK said, in order to do this countries need to put very strict caps in place. Australia has thousands of citizens that can't return
www.cnn.com/travel/article/australians-stranded-abroad-christmas/index.html

You can't staff and run hundreds of medihotels effectively even with the incoming traveller paying thousands for it. The covid outbreaks in Melbourne and Adelaide this year have come from staff working at the medihotels. Whilst I'm very jealous of the life my Australian family are living right now especially with Christmas and New years celebrations looking nearly normal, I can understand why the same programme could never have worked here (the UK had 1000 separate seeding events so elimination was never an option). That said I don't see why quarantine is left to the trust of individuals and there should be a system of checking up on people. We recently had to quarantine one of our DDs due to a case in her school bubble and we didnt receive any call or visit from anyone to check we were keeping her in. I know classmates were out on festive outings (reception age so not out without parental help!)

formerEUcitizen · 31/12/2020 16:55

I think once numbers in most areas were relatively low in early/mid summer, quarantine actually being enforced would have worked.
The problem was it was inconsistent with the government's desire to have people spending in in the aviation and tourism industry, so the numbers of people they were encouraging to go on foreign holidays wasn't feasible at the same time as proper quarantine, so the government went with the mass holiday/travel option and that in the end has been proven to have driven a huge in rise in cases due to a new variant being brought back from Europe (originating in Spain).

Enforcing quarantine only works if the government discourage foreign holidays/travel, which even at this time they are only paying lip service do based on the huge numbers of people taking Christmas/winter sun holidays right now.

Plus the government even removed the requirement to quarantine if you fly business/first class.

LacyEdge · 31/12/2020 17:01

No idea why they didn’t implement that here, other than the fact that they’ve relentlessly screwed up the Covid response from day 1.

Even now, with the South Africa variant causing great concern to epidemiologists, people can fly into Heathrow from Johannesburg, hop on the Tube and disappear into the population. No forms to fill in, no temperature checks. Nobody at the airport bats an eyelid. It’s fucking terrifying how lax this government is about all this.

AcornAutumn · 31/12/2020 17:51

Agree OP

I am vehemently anti lockdown and I have no idea why proper quarantine facilities were not used at the start. I have asked my local MP and he has avoided answering.

He also wouldn't answer about open bays on Covid wards - they can build the Nightingales but not adequate partitions for the poor souls who are ill and being exposed to more viral load?!

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