Forcing travelers to stay in quarantine hotels could have prevented thousands of potential Covid infections and deaths, a new report suggests.
the report, from the Scientific Advisory Group of No10 WAYHe gathered evidence from international studies on Covid transmission in hotel quarantines.
Britain’s hotel quarantine program has been controversial and MPs have criticized it for being prison-like and authoritarian. Those forced to stay in it had to pay up to £ 2,000 out of pocket.
However, the latest study suggests that despite their flaws, they may have protected the UK.
The SAGE file released by the government today cited a study of hotel quarantine violations in Australia and New Zealand.
The study found that by March 2021, for every 173 Covid-positive cases among travelers, there was only one violation of countries’ combined hotel quarantine efforts.
This means the vast majority of travelers with Covid have been kept in the quarantine system rather than passing the virus on to hotel staff or other guests or the wider community.
A SAGE report suggests controversial hotel quarantine rules may have prevented thousands of infections from reaching the community. Scientists cited data showing that Australia and New Zealand’s quarantine systems had recorded only one violation per 173 Covid-positive cases.
The SAGE document also highlighted some of the potential dangers of Covid quarantine violations.
The scientists cited the case of the Australian state of Victoria’s second wave of Covid, which was caused by a hotel quarantine violation and resulted in over 800 deaths.
The current rules in England mean that people who have visited a country on the ‘red’ travel list in the 10 days prior to their return to the UK must be quarantined in a hotel for 10 days after their arrival.
They pay fees of around £ 2,000 per person.
Anyone in the UK who breaks quarantine can be fined up to £ 10,000.
But many who were forced to stay in it complained about “inedible food”.
NHS staff member Amil Arif was one of those who said the meals served during hotel quarantine were “unsavory” (meal pictured left). The Holiday Inn Slough (pictured right) cost Ms. Amal £ 3,000 to spend 10 days in isolation.
Similar quarantine regulations also apply in the other UK countries.
The SAGE report also highlighted the hotel quarantine system in Singapore.
Between January and May 2021, there were more than 10,000 people in his system in Singapore every day.
At the time, there were only about a dozen cases of Covid transmission in hotels in Singapore, with the outbreaks being due to human error.
In contrast to the UK, a violation of the quarantine rules for hotels in Singapore is punishable by imprisonment.
All three countries named in the SAGE report, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, have significantly fewer Covid cases than the UK.
Statistics from Our World in Data – tracking the state of the pandemic – show the UK had an average of 436 daily cases per million people in the week ended September 16.
This compared to 116 daily cases per million for Singapore, 68 for Australia and only 4 for New Zealand.
The UK is seeing far more new Covid cases than any other country listed in the SAGE Hotel Quarantine Effectiveness Report
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