Pre-flight Covid rules for England ‘too little too late’

By Nadeem Badshah

NEW coronavirus rules for travellers to England are not tough enough compared to measures implemented in other countries including India, according to experts and MPs.

From Monday (18), everyone arriving by boat, train or plane have to test nega­tive for Covid-19 before they can enter the UK. They also have to take a Covid test up to 72 hours before leaving their country of departure. However, some people are ex­empt, including hauliers and under-11s.

The rule was supposed to be in force from last Friday (15) but was delayed by the government. However, similar rules have been in place in many parts of Eu­rope for months.

In India, arrivals are subject to medical screening along with a 14-day quarantine if a person tests positive. Under revised rules, air passengers from the UK have had to shield for seven days even if they tested negative, and had further Covid tests on arrival in Delhi.

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a senior epide­miology lecturer at Queen Mary Univer­sity of London, told Eastern Eye: “Pre-travel testing is welcome, but it’s impor­tant this is carried out with high sensitiv­ity tests, for example PCR tests.

“Also, these should not be seen as re­placements for quarantine. We know that transmission can, and has occurred even with negative pre-travel testing, and im­port of infections and new variants can only be prevented with quarantine.

“The UK measures for quarantine don’t go far enough. These were reduced from 14 to 10 days – a change that is not supported by scientific evidence.

“The UK should adopt managed quar­antine for 14 days irrespective of test re­sults, in line with practice in other coun­tries, such as New Zealand.”

Britain has been criticised for being one of the few countries during the Covid crisis with no mandatory temperature checks or coronavirus testing at airports.

Almost one in every 660 people in the UK have died from Covid or related caus­es so far. The UK has one of the worst coronavirus mortality rates in the world at 151 per 100,000 people, ahead of the US, Spain and Mexico. The death toll in the UK reached 91,470 while the figure in India was 152,556 as Eastern Eye went to press on Tuesday (19).

Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrats MP for Twickenham in London, told East­ern Eye: “Yet again the Tories have been painfully slow to act on travel restrictions, and they still haven’t been clear on how they will implement new measures.

“Other countries have had rigorous measures in place early and this has had proven results.

“It is unbelievable that you can still freely enter the UK from South Africa and Brazil despite reports of worrying new strains of Covid spreading there.”

Tougher Covid measures in other na­tions include Bahrain having a test on arrival at airports with the results within 12 hours. It involves a 20-minute process including registration and nasal swab and a vaccine registration online with free of charge appointments within three days offering the Sinopharm or Pfizer jab.

Kirit Masrani, an airport services man­ager in the UK, said: “In my opinion, the government should close boarders and stop air travel totally for at least two weeks, apart from cargo movements.

“This should have happened in the first lockdown. Other countries did it.”

Zarah Sultana, a Labour MP for Coven­try South in the Midlands, believes the government’s handling of the pandemic has been “appalling”.

She said: “We could be living relatively normal lives again, as people are in New Zealand and in Vietnam right now, if only our government had acted early and tak­en the necessary measures to contain the virus properly.

“This isn’t the benefit of hindsight– the right answers were clear at the time, but the government ignored those of us call­ing for them. It has sent all the wrong signals and has consistently been too slow to act, even ignoring the pleas of its own scientists and many MPs.

“Now Britain is truly the sick man of Europe, with the virus running rampant. Much of this suffering was avoidable.”

Asked why more than 11 months after the first Covid case in the UK, border test­ing had still not been introduced, Home Office minister Victoria Atkins said there was a “very delicate balancing act” when deciding on travel restrictions.

Atkins said: “We have had a series of travel restrictions; indeed the quarantine restrictions have been in force for some time. There’s a very delicate balancing act between controlling the virus and ensur­ing we are not putting too much of a bur­den on the economy.”

She added: “We have listened to the concerns that many people had about whether the message has quite got through to people who are making the flights over the weekend, and we have acted in rela­tion to those concerns.”

Transport secretary Grant Shapps said the new measures were delayed in order “to give international arrivals time to pre­pare passengers”.

Last Sunday (17), the government said it was looking at requiring all incoming travellers to isolate in hotels.

All arrivals to the UK will have to quar­antine and show negative tests for Cov­id-19 from Monday (18) at 0400 GMT. The move comes after the government scrapped “travel corridors” from coun­tries with lower caseloads following the emergence of new strains.

The Sunday Times (17) said the gov­ernment planned to go further, emulating countries such as Australia and New Zea­land in requiring travellers to self-isolate in hotels at their own cost, and using GPS and facial recognition technology to check they are staying put.

“There is a challenge of its workability, its deliverability, but we need to look at that very carefully based on the experi­ence of other countries,” foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC.

“There will be checks at home, there will be checks at the border. I think that is the most effective measure we can take at this point in time,” he said.

“Obviously we’ll keep other potential measures under review. But they’ve got to be workable.”

The measures taking effect from Mon­day come after Britain banned all arrivals from South America and Portugal last Friday over fears of importing a new coro­navirus variant from Brazil.