LONDON (AP) — Britain began imposing a 14-day quarantine Monday on travelers coming into the country — a sweeping measure meant to halt the further spread of COVID-19 that has been roundly criticized by the aviation and tourism industries.
All passengers — bar a handful of exceptions like truckers or medical workers — will be asked to fill in a form detailing exactly where they will self-isolate for two weeks and give a phone number so authorities can check up on them. The requirement applies regardless if they are citizens or not.
In England, new arrivals should stay indoors and rely on others to get their food. They can only leave for specific reasons like needing urgent medical care or medicine. Those who fail to comply with the quarantine rules could be fined.
“There are quite a lot of unknowns about the situation,’’ Crime, Policing and Justice Minister Kit Malthouse told the BBC. “But for the moment, having a clear set of rules around international travel is critical.”
The quarantine was imposed after a heated debate on whether it would help British efforts to tamp down the U.K. outbreak or simply stamp out any hopes that the British tourism industry will recover following months of closures under the country’s coronavirus lockdown measures.
Many questioned the quarantine’s timing, saying it has been introduced too late to be useful and too early to tamp down on any expected second wave of infections.
Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the prestigious Royal Society, told the BBC that the coronavirus transmission rate in the U.K. is still too high for the quarantine to work well.
“I would say that countries that have imposed quarantine did so either very early or after the case rate in the country had gone down quite a bit,” he said.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said the quarantine was a “political stunt” and argued that it will cause “untold devastation” for the country’s tourism industry, not just on the airlines.
“You could be on the beach, you could be on the golf course in the unlikely event the Home Office calls you — all they will have is a mobile number,” he said.
“The thousands of hotels, the thousands of visitor attractions, restaurants in the next couple of months – July and August are the two key months for British tourism,’’ he added. “We’re facing thousands of jobs losses because of a stupid, ineffective quarantine.”
Britain did not close its borders, screen international arrivals or impose testing and tracing measures for travellers during the worst of the coronavirus outbreak. Travellers continued to fly into British airports during the country’s domestic lockdown measures, introduced on March 23.
Passengers on a handful of flights from Wuhan, China were taken to isolation facilities in January and February. The government insisted for months that its scientific advice showed that restricting borders wouldn’t have significantly halted the spread of the virus in Britain.
Britain has the second-most most recorded coronavirus deaths in the world — 40,625 — after the United States. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has been roundly criticized for its slow response to fighting the outbreak. Many in his government, including Johnson himself, came down with coronavirus.
British Airways, EasyJet and Ryanair have written to the British government applying for a judicial review, arguing that the quarantine rules are disproportionate.
Willie Walsh, the boss of IAG — the group that owns British Airways — has said that airlines had not been consulted about the move.
At London’s Stansted Airport on Monday, shopkeeper Netti Rexhmet, who arrived on a flight from the Netherlands, said the rule will prevent him from working for two weeks.
“We haven’t got any other options, it’s government law so I shall do it,” he said, but added: “For me, I wouldn’t want to do it … I’ve got things to do. You have to live now, you have to pay.”
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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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