Britain quarantined just 273 out of 18.1million people who arrived in the UK in the three months before the coronavirus lockdown, damning new figures reveal today.
The occupants of three flights from the outbreak ground zero in the Chinese city of Wuhan and another bringing home passengers from a cruise ship of Japan were the only ones taken to secure facilities in the UK.
But millions more entering the UK between the start of 2020 and March 22 were able to enter freely and only advised to self-isolate, according to figures obtained by the Guardian.
It came as it also emerged the UK suffered a ‘big influx’ of coronavirus from arrivals from Italy and Spain who were not quarantined.
Mapping of the Covid-19 genome shows that UK cases come from all over the world, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told MPs.
But a large number of cases in early March were from Europe and ‘seeded right the way across the country’ because Brits arriving back in the UK were allowed to return home.
Giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee this morning, Sir Patrick said that experts on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) had advised ministers they would have to be ‘extremely draconian’ in blocking travel from whole countries otherwise ‘it really was not worth trying to do it.’
‘Whether that was people returning from half-term, whether it is business travellers or not, we don’t know,’ he told MPs.
‘But a lot of the cases in the UK didn’t come from China and didn’t come from the places you might have expected.
‘They actually came from European imports and the high level of travel into the UK around that time.’
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: ‘The scale of our outbreak is down to the government not acting on flights. Thank you to Patrick Vallance for his honesty.’
Sir patrick Vallance told MPs: ‘But a lot of the cases in the UK didn’t come from China and didn’t come from the places you might have expected’
People returning from other hotspots such as China and a cruise ship off Japan, were put into camps for 14 days at the end of February, including one at Arrowe Park in Wirral (pictured on February 22)
At the weekend a senior minister finally confirmed visitors to the UK could face time in quarantine as the Government ‘actively’ considers stronger anti-coronavirus measures at the borders.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that new arrivals could also be forced to download a new contract app onto their smartphone as a condition of entry.
New restrictions would make the UK one of the last countries to introduce them, with the country very much an outlier in recent weeks by not halting inbound flights or insisting arrivals are checked.
People arriving are currently advised to self-isolate but there is no enforced testing.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be among those who have demanded tougher rules for foreign visitors and the remaining Brits still abroad who make it home.
But Sir Patrick suggested stopping travel was of limited use unless action was taken against a wide-range of countries.
‘What was very clear, and I think you can see this now in retrospect, is that the idea that you can control this by stopping travel from one place doesn’t work unless it is of course the only source of import,’ he said this morning.
‘We have now in the UK sequenced 13,6000 viral genomes, we got imports from all over the place.
‘So quite early on the advice Sage gave was ”if you are going to do something on travel you either need to be extremely draconian – stop all travel from all sorts of countries – or it is really not worth trying to do it, trying to stop from one place because you won’t make it happen”.
So I think the answer is not, unless the country chose to do that, stopping travel anywhere and to … make sure that as people come back you have appropriate systems to isolate and make sure they are following the same rules as the rest of the country.’
Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries, who was also giving evidence, added: ‘There are pros and cons which are not necessarily always obvious I think, between managing influx and outflux of passengers but also goods.
‘If you shut travel routes in, you are also shutting routes for various products which may be essential, not just for our population but all around the world.
‘At the moment most people who are coming back are coming back into the UK back home and they will immediately fall under social distancing regulations anyway.’