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?

"their", not "there"..

I have mixed feelings on this. The government should have acted ages ago. We travelled to South Africa in February last year. When we landed, they were taking everyone’s temperature and had separate queues for people coming from China and Italy. Three weeks later all the international ports of entry closed. When we landed in trh U.K., it was the usual mosh pit in arrivals, too few border control people so you had to queue for ages. We went in July to see my IB laws in France, and at that point they were checking if you had completed the forms at passport control. By December (when DH took the kids to see MIL) the U.K. authorities had stopped doing any checks whatsoever.

On the other hand, it really sucks. Most of my family lives outside the U.K. and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them. My uncle died in October, and it took two attempts for my cousin to travel back and see him before he passed. We have a friend who lost his father to covid in July, and his mother a couple of weeks ago. He has no idea when he can go back and see the rest of the family.

It is only a bit of a scheme in my opinion. I am sure we will find out the loopholes being exploited before far too long.

Wishing for an edit function but in the meantime I need to point out that upthread I meant to write that the requirement to declare one's reasons for travel , in writing, should be declared to a Government Official, preferably uniformed, on departing the UK, rather than relying on the operator's staff. The reason being is there are sadly a few people around who will happily lie to travel company staff ...some of them might think twice about doing the same to a Police Constable...

As for loopholes..well it's certainly going to be interesting to see the full details of how this scheme is going to be monitored/enforced at the Border.

One of the first things we were told (in Aus) was no overseas holidays for a long time

Out of interest, how's Australia handling the issue of hospitality, airlines, travel agents and so on which will be decimated?

Back with europe, I'm also thinking of all the Mediterranean places which rely so heavily on the tourist trade. Somehow I can't see them being quite so keen to impose heavy entry requirements once the summer comes, but who knows

Almost all the population of Australia is now free to travel in their own state and some interstate. We're in summer and every little beach town is buzzing full of people who might otherwise have gone overseas.
There have been big job losses in airlines. Hospitality suffered during the lockdown s last year but is very much up and running again.

I’m glad they are going to be at least acting like they care why people are travelling. I do think however that you could come back and stay in your home for a token sum say £100 instead of 1000for a hotel. They would arrange safe transport if you didn’t have own transport and pay someone to ring around and do pop up checks to make sure people are staying put.

That sounds very sensible Akire
The news says the incoming traveller numbers at Heathrow is about 6,000 per day and the hotel capacity nearby about 10,000 rooms. There isn’t the capacity to realistically quarantine if we want to actually stop imports of virus rather than pick out a few hotspot countries while letting everyone else circulate.. so your plan seems the sensible way to do it.

I do think however that you could come back and stay in your home for a token sum say £100 instead of 1000for a hotel. They would arrange safe transport if you didn’t have own transport and pay someone to ring around and do pop up checks to make sure people are staying put.

There are a coupe of practical problems with that idea - many people's homes can be hundreds of miles from the likes of Heathrow (in pre-Covid time a high percentage of British residents arriving at Heathrow would get off an inbound Long Haul flight and go onto catch a connecting flight to somewhere else in the UK such as Manchester, Edinburgh, etc)...

and sadly, anecdotally at least, it appears people won't stay put if left to quarantine in their own home, you'd have to put a guard on the house 24/7 to ensure compliance....

Hence the hotel plan..(as used in some other countries)

Do we think there will be daily updates on how many arrivals have gone to Quarantine (that day)? My bet is the numbers will be miniscule compared to the 8k arrivals/day at Heathrow etc. 2-3 hundred people/day max.

Is it true about the 8k a day arrivals at Heathrow? I keep hearing about it.

Where are they all coming from? Where have they been?

Many won’t stay put though that’s the problem. Just like many go out whilst meant to be isolating after contact, wanting for test results or even when tested positive.
Hotels are a much better idea, easier to contain, staff can do contactless food deliveries etc, they earn some income and many just won’t travel due to the cost so less spread.

Where are they all coming from? Where have they been?

To get some context 8k is really a dribble compared with the "olden days" when it would be up around to a ballpark 100K (though many of those would be on a direct transfer out of the UK).

With numbers that low and from what I'm hearing elsewhere I'd suggest many of that 8k will genuinely be people travelling around the world/Europe/the UK as part of their role as essential workers, and UK residents returning from overseas work - perhaps at the end of contracts end of a block of work.

There will still be the odd traveller returning from a ""leisure" trip or people who are travelling for family reasons..whatever the reason it's certainly not 8k influencers returning from Dubai or several thousand "rich and powerful" skiers.., despite rumours to the contrary....

8k will genuinely be people travelling around the world/Europe/the UK as part of their role as essential workers, and UK residents returning from overseas work - perhaps at the end of contracts end of a block of work.

There will still be the odd traveller returning from a ""leisure" trip or people who are travelling for family reasons..whatever the reason it's certainly not 8k influencers returning from Dubai or several thousand "rich and powerful" skiers..smile, despite rumours to the contrary....

Precisely. Since lockdown it’s not been allowed to leave our homes and travel or stay overnight elsewhere except for specified reasons like work. Holidays obviously are banned. Others may have left the country previously and need to return, others are doing keyworker work involving air travel. You can’t leave your home for work unless you are in a specific category. It’s ridiculous Priti Patel saying they’ll have army and police at ports and airports. Talk about posturing populism. Why? It’s already outlawed to be popping off on holiday. Has been for weeks.

Talk about posturing populism

At the risk of being controversial (again) I think one of the perception problems throughout this debate has been that many people only equate aircraft and airports with holidays/leisure travel ..and TBF if the airports you know best are the likes of Stansted or similar then the impression gets reinforced, because thats the traffic what they specialise in...so there's a temptation to think:

Airports = Leisure Travel...People at them = holiday makers.

It's only if you spend a significant time at places like Heathrow (and to some extent the other bigger airports such as Manchester and Gatwick) that you realise those places are very different "animals"..they're very much more part of a transport system being used by a lot of people working or travelling for work ( and yes I realise whether that is right or not is the subject of a whole other debate)

I don think people have been aware of quite how much essential work there is to be done.
They would soon start complaining if they have no heating, tv, hospitals, refuse collections etc etc for months on end. No petrol, mobile phones working, sewage working properly, and on and on the list goes.

scrub refuge collections in regards specifically to air travel!

How often do these people have to travel? Where are they travelling to/from? Can they stay where their work is for longer? How do other countries cope if they have quarantine in place with all these essential workers who have to travel? Surely this number of people travelling for work everyday is really bad for the climate?

I know someone who is a frequent flier to do with oil rigs. He already has to quarantine for 2 weeks there, before he even starts work.

How often do these people have to travel? Where are they travelling to/from

Depends on the job: "where" for some can be anywhere in the world...as far as "how often" goes it's not uncommon for those involved in some aspects of transport and logistics to travel into/out of the UK several times a month, either when actually transporting stuff or OTOH travelling to the first port of departure to start a duty cycle, or on the way hone having finished one.

When I was in that type of work it wasn't that unusual to enter the uk as a passenger three or four times a month.

A multiday quarantine is absolutely incompatible with that type of working and the UK needs the inbound freight, even if it doesn't want the passengers

@ineedaholidaynow
The person I am talking about is not in the same place in the world for any two months.
As @notimagain says, can be anywhere, and is. Any continent.

@ineedaholidaynow DH works on international sporting events. By definition something that he needs to travel to. As the events locations move all over he needs to be on site for around two weeks at a time and back home in between.

I do wonder if international sporting events should be happening at the moment. Especially if there are some people who haven’t been able to return home yet, but sports people are allowed to enter the country

I know for France at least during the first lockdown, you couldn’t travel into the country unless you were a medical worker or a French resident going home. It was impossible to book airline tickets / Eurostar tickets if you weren’t. Our friend’s MIL was with them for three months because of this, and for some reason another friend’s uncle was stuck in Paris for 4 months and couldn’t return to Russia

@ineedaholidaynow its very managed, almost daily testing and in a bubble, just go between hotel and site.
I'd be very surprised if it was stopped but who knows. I hope not though, we like having the means to eat.