Airline passenger quarantine

From the BBC:

"Sources say people will have to provide an address when they arrive in the UK and self-isolate there for two weeks, unless they’re coming from the Republic of Ireland."

Can't get me head round this one, thousands have been flying into the UK since this started, untested, unquarantined, uncontrolled. Even from Italy and China.

Now the government are talking about quarantine from the end of May, another 3 weeks!
If it's necessary to do this-why wait another 3 weeks and allow god knows how many untested passenger to circulate in the community?

And why are the Irish exempt from this? Are they immune from the virus and not one of them is asymptomatic?

Also all the passengers have to do is provide an address and say they will self isolate for 14 days, how many will stick to that?

How will this be policed?

It seems another barmy decision (or non decision) to me

 

Unbeleivable jeff FFS

 

Imo none essential passenger travel should be banned regardless of the country and those who are deemed essential should be tested on entry at their expense plus a significant mark up. Fail the test and get on the next flight back.

 

Herd immunity. Slowly, but surely. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me. For this and for pretty much every other decision the government has made.

 

Seems like a classic case of ‘seen to be doing things’ No doubt that question will disappear out of mainstream news like the 100k daily testing has

 

^^^^^^ This

 

Only about 2 months too late.

 

Tory logic.

 

It wouldn’t have disappeared out the news if we’d have been under a Labour government.

 

What about UK citizens who have been self-isolating in a safe place abroad since before lockdown? Doesn't seem fair to punish them for not returning to the UK at the height of the pandemic. Asking for a friend.

 

Correct can’t believe it wasn’t stopped straight away and people are still arriving collecting baggage and away ! But then we know this government has done too little too late and is more concerned about the economy, cue the Corbin (******) responses.

 

Airlines have reacted angrily to government suggestions that the UK could implement a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving in the country.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps said he was "actively looking at these issues so that when we have infection rates within the country under control we're not importing".

But Airlines UK said such a measure "would effectively kill air travel"

Two things strike me about this BBC piece.

Firstly Grant Shapps appears to say that when we have the infection rates under control we will then implement a 14 day quarantine rule. Until then we'll allow thousands of potentially infected people to come into the country. How will we get it under control UNLESS we impose the rule now?
Doesn't make an ounce of sense to me that statement.

Secondly the airlines are complaining it would kill air travel. But it's ok to potentially kill thousands by your action of flying them in in uncontrolled. What they mean is it would kill their income, and bugger the people dying.

 

Yep, the same pattern as the government decision making for all COVID19 actions throughout this pandemic.

I've started a lot of conversations of late with 'you couldn't make this up but.....'

 

Excellent suggestion FR, there are hundreds of empty hotels in London and most major cities. It takes between 1 and 2 days to take a swab and get it tested. Why not test everybody as they arrive and take them straight to the nearest hotel where they may have to stay a night waiting for their result?
This way they are guaranteed to be clear of infection at point of entry.
Very few of them will want to self isolate for 14 days so to me it's a no-brainer

 

As it happens my friend will indeed be returning to the UK on Le Shuttle in mid- to late-June as that's the latest he feels he can reasonably leave it. He intends to quarantine himself at home for 2 weeks, regardless of what the advice may or not be at that time and the fact that the area he's leaving has many fewer cases and deaths than the area he'll be returning to. As for the general gist of this thread, he and I are of one mind on this - people crossing international borders should have been at the very least strongly advised to quarantine wherever possible all along.

 

The logic is really quite simple and I don’t get the hysteria around this.

Quarantining individuals that enter the country that come from a country where the virus is equivalently prominent or less prominent makes absolutely no sense.
If a plane of 50 people come from Germany and 1 of them has the virus, why should that sample of 50 individuals be quarantined, when you could take any sample of 50 individuals already in the UK and it’s likely that more than 1 of them has the virus?
It would make more sense to randomly select 50 individuals in the UK and ask them all to quarantine than it would to ask a plane full of people that come from Germany (or any other country where the virus is less prominent) to quarantine.

Therefore quarantining is only being introduced once we get to a position where individuals will be coming from countries where the virus is more prominent.

I think it’s reasonable to ask why quarantining wasn’t more widely introduced at the start of the pandemic (eg from Italy) but once we’ve moved beyond the contain phase it was never going to be introduced until we were past the peak.

 

I reckon it should start off the other way first. A 14 day quarantine before anybody flies out of this virus ridden island.

 

Here's a link to the quarantine process for returning residents to Hong Kong:

https://multimedia.scmp.com/infogra...ng-inbound-travellers-restrictions/index.html

There's been no local transmission for 20 days.

Could of course easily get a Singapore-like surge here - but situation OK for now

Not the only issue in HK right now of course.

 

The testing of flights would be too much like trouble for Tarquin Toryboy on his trips to his holiday home in the Cayman Islands every couple of weeks .