Is the government preparing is for a New Zealand scenario?

[lockdownbreakdown]

Does anyone else think we are going to be locked down until the majority are vaccinated and then the borders are going to be closed indefinitely to prevent new strains? I definitely get this vibe from all the stuff leaked in the press. It seems to be the only way we can stop new variant from ruining the vaccination programme as we cant vaccinate the kids if we let in new strains from abroad we will be going back into lockdown indefinitely. Thoughts?

New Zealand has new cases of Covid.Very few,but it’s there.

NZ has one new community case, confirmed today. With that, full contact tracing has gone into overdrive, and a lengthy list of the locations visited is now available.

I'm at the other end of the country - almost 600 miles away - but already we've been told to prepare for lockdown. And that is why numbers are low - early intervention, following on from the hard first lockdown. Almost everything was indeed shut, as mentioned by various PP. No postal service. No travel by car other than for grocery shopping / medical visits (if not possible by zoom). Walking allowed, but only from your house - no driving to a nice park to go sledging! Quite specifically, no swimming in the sea (might require emergency services) and no walking dogs off-lead. Proper lockdown

The infected woman all the correct procedures, quarantined, scanned wherever she visited. But the overwhelming question is why she was overseas, travelling in Spain and Holland (apparently) for 4 months. Holidaying during a pandemic, which is perceived as unnecessary and self-indulgent.

I haven't seen my family (inc. elderly parents) for almost 18 months and it's really shit but it's a small price to pay for almost normal life.

They’ve just announced that they’ve closed the NZ/Australia travel bubble as well, on the basis of that one case.

@480Widdio

New Zealand has new cases of Covid.Very few,but it’s there.

And they will now handle them like a competent country.

Not tell their citizens that they are fully prepared and then do absolutely nothing about it from January to March like our government did last year.

@THEDEACON

I wish they would my friends in New Zealand and living an almost normal life now

I think most of us would rather have had New Zealand's 2020, than the UK's.

@teezletangler

Those familiar with the Heathrow landscape know the idea of multiple day, managed quarantine for everybody arriving into LHR has always looked unmanageable with the current numbers..and even less possible at other points of entry into the UK which don't benefit from the density of hotels you have around the Heathrow perimeter (I'm thinking of the likes Manchester and also the likes of Dover and the Euro tunnel/Eurostar terminals).

Exactly, the plan for blanket hotel quarantine makes no sense whatsoever given the scale. It only works in Australia because they cap arrivals at 8,000 per week, and they have a backlog of ten of thousands of people wanting to come home. I don't think arrivals would necessarily reduce that drastically, because I don't think most travellers are returning from holiday. So at the end of the first 2 weeks you are potentially looking at 140,000 people in hotel quarantine- you'll be driving people from LHR to hotels up north at that rate! Not to mention the Chunnel and ferries- do you park your car in a massive car park before being put on a coach and then get driven back to it at the end? And then there is the back door via Dublin and the NI border, allowing you to evade hotel quarantine entirely.

I think it's possible that they might try this, but is suspect it will quickly fall apart if they do. I think everyone would be much better off with closer monitoring of home quarantine.

So why can’t the UK cap arrivals at a manageable rate?

It now looks like Sunak has thrown his weight behind the hotel quarantine plans too.

i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300213779/covid19-what-we-know-about-the-south-african-variant-so-far

It's the South African variant, caught in quarantine.

^So why can’t the UK cap arrivals at a manageable rate?

It now looks like Sunak has thrown his weight behind the hotel quarantine plans too.^

Is this really realistic when Heathrow is the world's second busiest airport? Most passengers are transiting onwards. It's not remotely similar to Australia or NZ, because no one is transiting to another country. The logistics are far more difficult in the UK.

Hypothetically speaking, if one of the variants was to evade the vaccines how soon do you think it would be between tweaking and redoing the whole thing again? It’s all well and good saying we can adjust the recipe but surely they would have to test how those who have had both doses would react to another formulation being introduced? Thoughts?

The vaccines were designed in a weekend after being sent the genetic profile of the virus.

In theory they can redesign it as quickly as that again.

The issue isn't redesigning the vaccine though.

Its ensuring its safe for roll out in humans without severe side effects. The vast majority of the time spent on the vaccines has been on trials whilst they started on manufacturing and production in parallel to that. We don't have to worry out manufacturing capacity but initial production may be slow. Whether they would need to go through the same level of testing for a new vaccine or could take short cuts I'm not sure.

Not extensively testing a new vaccine may undermine public trust in a new vaccine though and that could be a problem in its own right. And we may have issues over whether people who have recently had the oldet vaccine can tolerate the new one in quick succession.

And thats before you consider the logistics of rolling it out to the whole population.

But yes, its the government's sudden nervous undertones that are currently unsettling me.

@teezletangler

^So why can’t the UK cap arrivals at a manageable rate?

It now looks like Sunak has thrown his weight behind the hotel quarantine plans too.^

Is this really realistic when Heathrow is the world's second busiest airport? Most passengers are transiting onwards. It's not remotely similar to Australia or NZ, because no one is transiting to another country. The logistics are far more difficult in the UK.

Of course the logistics are difficult. Thankfully that’s for civil servants to figure out.

But the prospect of another long lockdown later in 2021, more school closures and severe disruption to children’s education; entire sectors furloughed again, because we have a vaccine-resistant strain...what do you think this is going to keep doing to society?

With Patel, Hancock and now Sunak seemingly all in support, it’s clear that the logistical difficulties of the plan are outweighed by the risks of importing new strains.

What I don't understand is how this will work for travel between Ireland and Northern Ireland. I mean how it will work in practice - what will actually happen as you cross the border by car/train? aiui there aren't passport checks - am I wrong?

Has anyone mentioned this - am I missing something really obvious? (probably). At the moment the focus seems to be mainly on what will happen at UK airports.

Of course the logistics are difficult. Thankfully that’s for civil servants to figure out.

Oh god are we really back to 'its not our responsibility to think of practical plans, they should just magically happen' in terms of public thinking. And when civil servants say 'actually thats not realistic for x, y or z reason' they are just ignored and told to get on with it anyway and to stop making 'excuses' (telling home truths about reality).

Its like people just think that civil servants can magically make anything happen if they just believe hard enough.

This country is a mess because it cant pull its head out of it arse on that one.

Not good enough. We need coherent thought processes going on not wishful thinking.

"Our borders should have been shut end of Feb. We let everyone in, no checks, even the Chinese. We would have been like NZ now if we had. FFS we are an island. "

Following from my previous post though - what would we have done at the Ireland/NI border? (I can't help feeling I must be missing some obvious answer, as the news reports I've seen so far today don't seem to mention this issue!)

@Aixenprovence

What I don't understand is how this will work for travel between Ireland and Northern Ireland. I mean how it will work in practice - what will actually happen as you cross the border by car/train? aiui there aren't passport checks - am I wrong?

Has anyone mentioned this - am I missing something really obvious? (probably). At the moment the focus seems to be mainly on what will happen at UK airports.

We've spent 5 long years discussing this issue without resolution.

No you are not missing anything.

There needs to be a considered and coherent cross border single policy on matters. The uk doesn't want to have this conversation because 'sovereignity' and 'eu'.

@RedToothBrush

Of course the logistics are difficult. Thankfully that’s for civil servants to figure out.

Oh god are we really back to 'its not our responsibility to think of practical plans, they should just magically happen' in terms of public thinking. And when civil servants say 'actually thats not realistic for x, y or z reason' they are just ignored and told to get on with it anyway and to stop making 'excuses' (telling home truths about reality).

Its like people just think that civil servants can magically make anything happen if they just believe hard enough.

This country is a mess because it cant pull its head out of it arse on that one.

Not good enough. We need coherent thought processes going on not wishful thinking.

I’m not sure what you mean. Yes, I don’t think it’s up to MumsNetters to devise solutions to these problems. Furlough would have been an impossible proposition a year ago. Also, what’s the point? Plenty of people have been demanding more proactivity and suggesting solutions on here for months. They were hardly listened to Whitehall were they?

There are no easy answers here. If the civil serve decides, after methodical review, that the quarantine plan is completely and utterly unfeasible, then that’s that. But come up with a long-term - in case of vaccine-resistant mutations - they absolutely must do, because this situation is not sustainable.

So why can’t the UK cap arrivals at a manageable rate?

I think if any CAP is announced we need to be wary of the smoke and mirrors and "the optics".

HMG has a fine line to walk.

100% quarantine with everybody entering the UK going into quarantine then HMG can't set the cap so low that various industries and the supply chain grind to a halt...OTOH if they set the Cap too high you risk the sort of logistical chaos teezletangler describes ( and as seen around the Heathrow hotel chains every time it snows).

I suspect there'll be some form of compromise with some travellers but not all of them going into managed quarantine...

It now looks like Sunak has thrown his weight behind the hotel quarantine plans too

Would you allow me a ..he's the man that had the "eat out to help out" brainwave to help out the hospitality industry..as I mentioned upthread one of the groups that I suspect will be really keen on managed quarantine will be the big hotel chains...

Anyhow it will be interesting to see if/what is announced..and I'd be very interesting to see any fine print ..

Thanks Redtoothbrush! - in that case is the 14 day supervised quarantine policy going to achieve enough to be worth the costs?

How long is this intended to be in place, I wonder? If one concern is about the mutations we don't yet know about which could be vaccine resistant (MH interview yesterday - didn't watch it but I gather that's what he said), what could be the test for lifting the policy? As long as the virus remains in existence it will continue to mutate somewhere in the world won't it? I suppose once cases are down you could lift the restriction if you genome sequenced every positive case - and reintroduced restrictions if you found one that seemed likely to be vaccine resistant. Is that scientifically possible?

"I suspect there'll be some form of compromise with some travellers but not all of them going into managed quarantine..."

Yes - freight drivers as well are unlikely to be required to do so, I would have thought. There's a report this morning that they are already becoming less willing to travel to UK. Which raises the question - once you have those compromises, do you achieve enough for any of it to be worth it?

@Zogstart

If no one went to work in New Zealand for 7 weeks who looked after all your care homes residents? GP services provided? What about water supply? Were there any fires needing to be put out? Emergency vet care? People clearly did go to work in your lockdown. Just like key workers did over here in March.

GP's we're doing a lot of tele consults and vets,while at work, were operating in a very different way. Handover of pet in outdoor car park, phone call to update/consult and pick up outdoors. So yes they were at work but in a very different way. On a different note I'm surprised not many mention the numbers of visitors from China to NZ. I think it's around 40-50,000 per month usually and often in massive tour groups. So while NZ isn't a hub in the same way a lot of the UK airports are they were definitely at high risk of covid coming and becoming established.

Aixenprovence there is a lot of talk about the border problem in the Irish press but none in the UK press. I'm puzzled too as to why this is... Anyone who wants to could evade hotel quarantine by flying to Dublin and driving into NI, then continuing on to GB. And who wouldn't take advantage of this loophole if the alternative is 10 days under lock and key in a Premier Inn? It's just so odd that no one will raise the glaring error in this plan. Either journalists are so ignorant that they don't know anything about UK-Irish politics, or they don't want to raise it for fear of promoting it...

A two-island managed solution is really the only way to get rid of the loophole, but I don't think there is much political will for it at the moment.

Would the hotels really fill up so quickly - or would most people just stop coming to the UK rather than do the 14 days, so demand might not be that high? As a matter of interest, do we know who most of the current entrants are - work, family, other?

If the civil serve decides, after methodical review, that the quarantine plan is completely and utterly unfeasible, then that’s that.

My suspicion is they have. Thats been ignored. Then politicians are deciding they are going to do it anyway without really thinking it through. Because there are so many members of the public just demanding it and declaring 'well its not my responsibility to think it through'. And the politicians are too gutless to tell people to belt up. And we will then either ditch the plan at the 11th hour when the logistics become apparent as impossible or we will go ahead with it anyway and it will be another unmitigated disaster because of populism and the public acting like spoilt brats.

@Aixenprovence

Would the hotels really fill up so quickly - or would most people just stop coming to the UK rather than do the 14 days, so demand might not be that high? As a matter of interest, do we know who most of the current entrants are - work, family, other?

Well Pre-Covid it was reckoned about 30% of those travelling into/through Heathrow were travelling for work purposes...I suspect as passenger numbers have fallen the work percentage has risen but I don't have access to those stats.

How many of those would choose to travel now and how many of those would be in in one of the current "essential worker exempt from quarantine/self isolation who knows.

Interesting Redtoothbrush. Have Whitty/Vallance/any of the numerous members of Sage who pop up on the radio/in the papers, expressed a view on this at all? I haven't followed the press briefings or read Sage minutes for a while, so no idea what their thinking is on supervised quarantine. Do we know if the supervised quarantine is a Sage proposal?

Presumably civil servants will have raised the Ireland/NI issue - would be interesting to know what the thinking on that is.

"How many of those would choose to travel now and how many of those would be in in one of the current "essential worker exempt from quarantine/self isolation who knows."

Yes, interesting questions both! I assume that the govt has formed some idea of the numbers - that's the kind of question it would be really interesting to hear more about in the interviews - have the tv interviewers asked any of this or has there been any analysis on broadcast news? And also the 'if we have exceptions do the benefits outweigh the costs' question?