Mandatory hotel quarantine in the UK

[Circumlocutious]

There was the New Zealand thread which touched on this, but I thought it’s helpful to have a more targeted discussion. Mandatory hotel quarantine for all UK arrivals, likely to be signed off on tomorrow.

Twitter thread from FT journalist discussing some of the complex aspects involved:

mobile.twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1353657496716660737

Do you think it’ll ‘work’? (presumably its main purpose is to stop new covid variants from coming in). Why / why not?

Well it seems this is going ahead for only “high risk” countries which makes it essentially pointless IMO. Reminds me of the inane restrictions back at the start where only people who’d been to Wuhan, Milan or Tenerife could get a Covid test.

Hancock said yesterday that the mutation that worries him the most is the one they don’t know about yet. This won’t help against that, and it won’t stop someone coming in from Brazil via Paris.

I think that the situation we have now is the worst of both worlds - horrific death count and ruined economy

Yes. And not helped by the kind of British exceptionalism rife on this thread. As if UK citizens have a right to roam the world without check.

It's interesting how many try to say to me "Oh it's different. You don't know" - well, yes, I do. You can't counter a reasonable argument only by insisting your personal experience completely invalidates it. You need to accept that there are different ways of seeing the current situation.

I come from several generations of people who worked & travelled internationally in industry, diplomacy and education (as I say, running the Empire essentially). So I've grown up with the understanding that there are huge benefits to this, but that there are also difficulties. The oil crisis and skyjackings of the 1970s for example, and living in a pre-Internet world, or when a flight to Australia took around 36 hours ...

It is foolhardy to assume that the easiest conditions will always be the norm.

@MyHeartIsNeverOnTime

Well it seems this is going ahead for only “high risk” countries which makes it essentially pointless IMO. Reminds me of the inane restrictions back at the start where only people who’d been to Wuhan, Milan or Tenerife could get a Covid test.

Hancock said yesterday that the mutation that worries him the most is the one they don’t know about yet. This won’t help against that, and it won’t stop someone coming in from Brazil via Paris.

Completely agree with this. Too little, too late, and missing the point (about stopping new variants before they are known about).

Can someone just clarify for me please.

I live in Portugal and my parents will (hopefully!) have had the vaccine by the time they had booked to come and see us in July/August. Would they be able to do this, would they have to stay in a hotel on their return to the U.K.? Sorry lots of different, confusing news stories

Well it seems this is going ahead for only “high risk” countries which makes it essentially pointless IMO

While there are connecting flights it wouldn't matter if they stopped everything except low risk countries

As mentioned last week flights from South Africa were supposedly halted - but there they still are, connecting via Dubai

@Twirlywooooo

Can someone just clarify for me please.

I live in Portugal and my parents will (hopefully!) have had the vaccine by the time they had booked to come and see us in July/August. Would they be able to do this, would they have to stay in a hotel on their return to the U.K.? Sorry lots of different, confusing news stories

It hasn’t been officially announced yet so we don’t know.

Under the proposed plans if they go to Portugal they will have to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days on their return to the UK at their own expense. But we don’t know yet how long these rules will be imposed for, which countries, whether countries will change etc. They are discussing it all now I think.

I’d like to see that it also encapsulates travel by private jet too as this has been used as loophole to get around some restrictions.

Ummm....can you be specific about what these private jet "loopholes" are. The rules about how and where you arrive in the UK are very prescriptive and there are severe penalties for trying to do an end run around customs and immigration when arriving on a private flight: FWIW

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/946966/GAR-Instructions-January_2021_PDF.pdf

Any chance you're thinking of the high worth individuals get out, which applies regardless of how you enter the UK?

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but what about those found stowing away in lorries and (if it's to continue into the warmer weather) the channel-crossing dinghies?

Given the risky backgrounds some come from there's every chance they could also be carrying Covid, so will it apply here too?

If they do this, I would really hope to see it differentiated by country. The autumn/winter wave is basically over in Iceland now and we're back down to 1 or 2 cases per day, most of whom were already quarantined. I don't think it much sense to limit travel from a country with such low rates, much lower than the UK.

Border controls have been fairly successful for us, although we haven't been anywhere near as aggressive as Aus and NZ. We currently have test at border, 5 day quarantine at home or hotel if you have nowhere to go, then second test. People who can prove they've already had the disease and recovered or been vaccinated are exempt. But that is in combination with good testing and contact tracing and also a relatively low population density, if that does indeed make a difference. We are living much more 'normal' lives than in many places but it remains to be seen whether the decimation of the tourist industry has been worth it.

For the UK, to me it looks too much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Community transmission is so high that there is surely enough to sustain itself without new cases at the border?

Isn’t this more about having the systems and the public understanding in place for a future mutant strain though rather than blocking mutant strains now? That’s the way I see it anyway so like the travel corridors it’ll be a system in place that can be utilised if necessary for particular countries at particular times over the coming months should the need arise. There’s little point putting people in hotels if they are coming from a country with a lower infection rate than us here for example

Community transmission is so high that there is surely enough to sustain itself without new cases at the border?

Yes definitely agree

My DH is deploying and we were initially told he would have to quarantine on return for 2 weeks, but could do so at home. I wonder if now he will have to do it in military accommodation. I bloody hope not :(

What is the exit strategy here? If the argument is ‘shutting out new variants’, that means borders closed for years. Till the whole world is vaccinated. Also if countries all follow suit (as it seems the US is ready to do), surely that will just mean the virus evolves and mutates in each closed country. So a specific variant for every nation, so one vaccine probably will be ineffective against all/ most of the other strains. This all sounds like great news for Boris and his cronies with shares in hotels and pharmaceuticals.

@PuffinShop

If they do this, I would really hope to see it differentiated by country. The autumn/winter wave is basically over in Iceland now and we're back down to 1 or 2 cases per day, most of whom were already quarantined. I don't think it much sense to limit travel from a country with such low rates, much lower than the UK.

Border controls have been fairly successful for us, although we haven't been anywhere near as aggressive as Aus and NZ. We currently have test at border, 5 day quarantine at home or hotel if you have nowhere to go, then second test. People who can prove they've already had the disease and recovered or been vaccinated are exempt. But that is in combination with good testing and contact tracing and also a relatively low population density, if that does indeed make a difference. We are living much more 'normal' lives than in many places but it remains to be seen whether the decimation of the tourist industry has been worth it.

For the UK, to me it looks too much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Community transmission is so high that there is surely enough to sustain itself without new cases at the border?

If they are quarantining at home, are there checks in place to ensure they do it? (People have been generally ignoring the need to quarantine here I feel and there have been no checks at all- just done on trust- which obviously didn’t work).

Also, do the authorities check that they are not planning to take public transport back to their home? (I think this must be a big problem here especially around London), and what about essential food shopping? Most people would need to buy basics if they’ve been away...

Well, there is a difference between isolation and quarantine. You have the test first at the border. You are then in isolation for a few hours until the results come through. You are allowed to take a taxi home or the airport shuttle (although it's not running atm I don't think). You can have food delivered.

If your first test is negative, at that stage it's really unlikely that you actually have the disease (though it did happen one or two times, which is why they introduced the double test system). Then quarantine for 5 days - we did not have any official check up for this when we did it. Obviously this is not completely fail safe, but overall it's worked OK. If your test is positive, you are then in isolation. People in isolation get a lot of follow up and are under more restrictions. The problems have been from people who opted to do a 14-day quarantine with no test, but never had any intention of quarantining at all. That option was removed.

As I said, Iceland is much less aggressive than Aus and NZ but things are going fairly well nonetheless due to the combination of strategies and also probably a dose of luck.

What is the exit strategy here? If the argument is ‘shutting out new variants’, that means borders closed for years. Till the whole world is vaccinated

This was asked several times last night, Sitting

No response of course ...

How have they not learnt that half measures are the worst of both worlds by now? Damage to the economy in restricting movement, but likely little to no effect on mutant strains arriving here, which means more long term damage to the economy and lives lost.

@Indoctro I’m in the same position. The thought of DP having to isolate in a hotel when he flies home is giving me huge anxiety 😥

Why can other countries do this, but we always find excuses why it is impossible

It is worth remembering that there are only a handful of countries around the world who have implemented blanket hotel quarantine, because it requires massive effort in terms of organisation, space and logistics; very low numbers of travellers; and a border that you can actually fully control.

Meanwhile the UK has an unpatrolled land border with another country which is a back door in this is never going to be a successful strategy in the same way as NZ and Aus, but so many people don't seem to understand how the UK is so different to those places.

Because Covid 19 isn’t going away. It’s here to stay

They either need to do it properly and close all the borders fully which they can’t really do - or they need to just get better at policing people who should be isolating at home.

I was listening to LBC today and they were talking about people who had gone to South Africa and then come home via Germany or Ireland (because they couldn’t fly directly into England).

Australia stopped cross state travelling, not just closing international borders

Today 14:13 Twirlywooooo

Can someone just clarify for me please.

I live in Portugal and my parents will (hopefully!) have had the vaccine by the time they had booked to come and see us in July/August. Would they be able to do this, would they have to stay in a hotel on their return to the U.K.? Sorry lots of different, confusing news stories“

Friends on the coast near Lisbon tell us that things have tightened up heavily in the past couple of weeks because of the new Brazilian variant?
How does it feel to you atm? I believe schools are closed now too?

Noone in Australia will be travelling abroad for a holiday for at least the next 18 months. It is completely off the table. A handful are leaving for compassionate and rarely work reasons. The people flying into Australia are Australian citizens who have been trying for months to get onto flights.
We have had various combinations of hard border closures between the states for months. In Melbourne's lockdown we had a 'ring of steel' solid police guard around the city for months. 4 million people were unable to leave the city.

Not entirely sure it’s workable. Are they stopping all ferries/Eurostar too? All these companies will require compensation. I doubt they can a) enforce for all countries b) keep up for very long.

The impracticalities are immense. We’re not Oz we are far more connected. They’d simply not have the hotel space to meet demand.

Time will tell

How many people are coming into the country at the moment?