Hotel quarantine scheme lifts off as first guests arrive in UK
England’s hotel quarantine scheme kicked off today as the first passengers touched down at airports around the country for the toughest border protection measures of the pandemic so far.
Four coaches of passengers dropped off passengers at the Radisson Blue Edwardian Hotel near Heathrow Airport this morning to start their 10-day stay, as the government attempts to ward off the threat of emerging Covid variants.
Quarantining guests will be required to eat airline-style food left at their door, change their own sheets, and be accompanied by security for fresh air or a cigarette throughout their stay.
Other venues involved include the Heathrow Renaissance Hotel, the Ibis Styles London Heathrow East hotel, Novotel Heathrow and the nearby three-star Thistle.
Speaking this morning, health secretary Matt Hancock said the system has been operating “smoothly” since it came into force at 4am today.
“We’ve been working with the airports and the Border Force to make sure that everybody knows [how it works],” he told Times Radio. “We have had to put this in place rapidly, I make no apologies for that, and we’ve been working with Heathrow and others.”
Despite warnings of five-hour airport queues, Heathrow said in a statement that the measures had come into effect “successfully”, with “queues at the border… currently less than an hour long”.
A spokesman added: “We will continue to monitor and seek assurance from our Border Force colleagues that they maintain adequate resource and effective processes to avoid unacceptable waiting times and compromising the safety of passengers.”
What are the rules?
Under the new hotel quarantine programme, all British and Irish citizens and UK residents who arrive in England after being in a high-risk Covid country now have to self-isolate in government-selected hotels for 10 days.
All direct flights into the UK have been banned from the “red list” of 33 countries, which includes Portugal, Brazil and South Africa.
However, the new regulations, which aim to stop new “variants of concern” entering the country, will apply to all arrivals who have been in one of those places in the past 10 days.
An initial 4,600 rooms have been made available via 16 different hotel operators for the scheme. Passengers may only arrive into Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham or Farnborough airports, according to the new legislation.
Each arrival must pre-book a £1,750-per-person package, which covers a 10-day hotel stay, transport and Covid testing. All passengers will also be required to take a pre-departure test, and further tests on their second and eighth days of quarantine.
The government will take a hard line on quarantine flouters, with penalties of £1,000 for any international arrivals who do not take a first mandatory test, £2,000 for anyone who refuses to take a second mandatory test, and £5,000 — rising to £10,000 — for arrivals who fail to quarantine at designated hotels.
Those who fail to disclose that they have been in an at-risk country in the past 10 days will face up to 10 years in prison.
“I make no apologies for these strong measures, because we’re dealing with one of the strongest threats to our public health we’ve faced as a nation,” Hancock told the Commons last week.
So far, 170 cases of the South African Covid variant have been found in the UK. Scientists are concerned that a new mutation detected in the strain may prove resistant to available vaccines.