VIRUS WAS HERE IN FEB ..AND EARLY TRAVEL BAN COULD HAVE SLOWED IT
Study: Quarantine for EU flights would have slowed onset Now passengers flying into UK must have negative test
SCOTLAND’S Covid rate could ould have been reduced if travelel to and from mainland Europe had been restricted earlier, ier, according to a report.
Glasgow University scientists sts found the virus was being spread ad here as early as February, mainly ly from elsewhere in Europe.
But Scotland and the rest of the UK did not impose quarantine ine rules on passengers enteringg the UK until May.
MRC-University of Glasgow gow Centre for Virus Research saidd the virus entered Scotland through at least 283 travellers within the first four weeks of the outbreak here.
Most of those were from Europe at a time when the Far East was widely viewed as the epicentre.
Within three days of the first case in Scotland, it had spread from passengers to other people, the study found.
Emma Thomson, the study’s senior author and professor of infectious diseases, said: “The speed at which the virus took hold in Scotland and the UK as a whole, following multiple introductions, mainly from other European countries, was extremely rapid.
“It is possible an earlier lockdown from countries with a high burden of cases, such as Italy, and other measures such as quarantine of travellers from high- risk areas might have prevented escalation of the outbreak and multiple clusters of ongoing community transmission.”
The report was published after it was announced on Thursday that passengers must return a negative test result before they are allowed to fly to the UK.
Covid-19 was first diagnosed in Scotland on March 1 last year.
Glasgow University scientists sequenced virus samples from the first confirmed cases in Scotland.
During the first month, 2641 confirmed cases led to more than 1000 people being taken to hospital and 126 deaths. The report stressed cases were almost certainly higher during that period.
People were advised not to travel to mainland China from the end of January but the study found cases directly linked to south-east Asia were rare in Scotland.
Instead, during the first four weeks of the outbreak in Scotland the virus was introduced hundreds of times from within Europe.
Researchers found within the first month there was a shift from younger adults being infected through travel, to older adults and healthcare workers catching Covid in the community.
Thomson said: “We identified viral lineages with no link to travel as early as three days after the first detection of infection, indicating earlier introduction to Scotland and community spread before the first detected case.
“The emergence of continental Europe as the epicentre of the global Covid pandemic was a clear driver of the Scottish outbreak, with the majority of the lineages detected in this study related to European sequences.
“Cases with links to China and other countries in south-east Asia were comparatively not detected.”
The new rules mean anyone travelling to the UK must have taken a test up to 72 hours before departure – or face a £500 fine. That applies to all UK nationals.
Border controls are a matter reserved to Westminster but the Scottish Government has backed the new measures.
International travel is banned except for limited circumstances such as essential work.
At the Scottish Government’s briefing yesterday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “The risks of international travel are particularly acute at the moment as new strains of this virus emerge and as case numbers globally continue to increase.
“That’s why it is – as of now – illegal for anyone to travel to or from Scotland unless it is for an essential purpose and I want to reiterate that point right now.
Europe was a clear driver of the Scottish outbreak EMMA THOMSON GLASGOW UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
“You should not be travelling within Scotland and you should not be travelling out of Scotland or into Scotland for anything other than an essential reason.
“Even with such a reason, anyone who is travelling to Scotland must still comply with quarantine requirements if they are coming from a country that is subject to those requirements.”