Shapps confirms quarantine will reduce by at least 50% for high-risk destinations
Although I think the government has gone overboard with their latest lockdown travel ban, it looks like when it ends there could be good news. At an online conference today, the Transport Minister Grant Shapps said that good progress has been made so far but there was more to do. The government still appear to be on track to allow a reduced quarantine of 5-7 days on arrival into the UK from high-risk countries instead of 14. Shapps is due to report to the PM on progress “very soon”.It’s still highly unlikely this will throw the travel industry enough of a lifetime to make a substantial difference. It is highly unlikely it will encourage more inbound tourism but with many people working from home now, it could encourage those people to book holidays with less onerous restrictions on their return.
He also confirmed that the long term priority was to get rid of quarantine entirely with the use of testing. This could be using something like the rapid actual-flow tests being trialled in Liverpool which give results in under an hour. Grant suggested that “Ultimately it could open the way for non-quarantined air travel.”
Shapps said,
“We’re making very good progress on a ‘test to release programme’ to launch once we’re out of this lockdown. Once we emerge from the lockdown, we can roll out new systems to help get people flying and travelling again.”
The travel industry is still reeling from the draconian rules announced for the current English lockdown which forbids most travel apart from for business purposes. Industry bosses have called for called for extra government help, which I think the government should be giving, or it is likely we will lose many travel companies over the winter. Grant dismissed this idea and said it was better to focus on getting customer flying again, ideally with a vaccine. “ideally through the development of an effective vaccine”.
Gatwick’s CEO of Gatwick favours an antigen test 72 hours before departure as a way to end quarantine, as many other countries are already doing,
The government was also working with other countries to look at pre-departure quarantine and testing options that would end the need for quarantine on arrival. Mr Shapps also said that it’s been confusing for passengers trying to understand different testing regimes for each nation. So the UK are leading international work to develop a framework for international travel to provide global consistency to give an accepted international standard.
While this is good news, the progress is still painfully slow. By the time they actually make a decision to reduce quarantine to a level that will allow the majority of people to travel, we will probably already have a vaccine! So many countries around the world have had a testing regime in place for many months. While quarantine sounds like it is protecting the UK from COVID, in actual fact it’s pretty pointless since research has revealed that a significant amount of people are not sticking to the full 14 days.
