If we quarantine UK arrivals, we must do it right

Editorial: Would it not make more sense to copy Austria and test travellers for Covid-19 when they arrive?

A quarantine for arrivals could have a 'devastating' effect on the economy, aviation chiefs have warned (Getty)

The prime minister is expected to announce today that arrivals to this country will be required to isolate for 14 days. Most people’s immediate response is to ask why such an obvious policy was not brought in sooner. In fact, there are good reasons for that, and the questions that really need to be asked are rather different.

The government’s scientific advisers explained several times during the peak of the coronavirus outbreak that quarantining arrivals would be a poor use of resources, because measures to reduce social mixing are the main way to slow and reverse the spread of infections. Once the virus had spread through the population, the contribution made by arrivals was insignificant.

The only time it would have made sense to impose a quarantine regime would have been before the first cases arrived, but at that stage too little was known about the disease and the idea of shutting down an entire nation was too extreme to be considered.