Fully jabbed red-list travellers could be able to quarantine at home
PM and Health Secretary hint at lifting requirement to stay in expensive hotels amid shortage of rooms
‘The Government must work now to allow the fully vaccinated to isolate at home and be monitored by NHS Test and Trace’
‘We have to trust people to be responsible and do the right thing by serving quarantine at home’
QUARANTINE hotels could be scrapped in favour of fully jabbed travellers isolating at home under plans being considered by ministers.
Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, have indicated that travel restrictions that have forced thousands of travellers arriving from red-listed countries to pay up to £2,285 a person to stay in quarantine hotels could be lifted.
Asked if they could instead isolate at home for the required 11 nights if fully vaccinated, the Prime Minister said: “We will be looking at the red list and the way to do it.”
Mr Javid said that as omicron became the dominant variant, there would be “less need to have any kind of travel restrictions at all”, suggesting that the red list could also be scrapped as part of the reviews of restrictions.
The moves are backed by senior Tory backbenchers. They come amid a shortage of quarantine hotel places as the major chains have spurned the scheme to focus on traditional holiday trade.
Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Social Care was so short of hotel capacity that stranded Britons seeking to fly in from South Africa were being told they had to wait until Dec 13 before they could fly back for a space.
In an exclusive online article for The Daily Telegraph, Henry Smith, the Tory chairman of the all-party Future of Aviation group, said that continuing to subject the fully vaccinated to hotel quarantine was “not sustainable and neither is the astronomical cost”.
He cited the “ridiculous” case of one of his constituents who had been forced to quarantine in a hotel where he could see his home through the window.
“The Government must work now to allow the fully vaccinated to isolate at home and be monitored by the NHS Test and Trace service, and bring down the cost of hotel quarantine while it remains necessary,” he said.
“I think we have to trust people to be responsible and do the right thing by serving quarantine at home.”
Eleven countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Namibia have been added to the red list. Ministers have also reintroduced pre-departure tests and day-two PCR tests for all passengers entering the UK. They have pledged to review the restrictions, potentially on Dec 20.
The difficulties were highlighted yesterday when guests were evacuated from a hotel at the same time as staff failed to find one traveller who had omicron in his room.
Dozens of guests were pictured huddled in a car park outside Hotel Sofitel, at London Gatwick airport, after alarms forced an evacuation.
Guests said that they were told to stay in their rooms when the alarm sounded, but 15 minutes later many fled to the car park, prompting fears of a “superspreader event”.