Quarantine: Scientific Advice

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford [V]]

My Lords, we would wish to instigate a four-nations approach, and we engage across four nations in an attempt to get unified approach. That has been our aim all along.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, on 4 April the EU and the UK experienced over 40,000 new Covid-19 cases, and the UK had no quarantine provision. Yesterday, the EU and the UK experienced just 16,000 new Covid-19 cases, a 60% reduction, and we now have a 14-day quarantine provision. How can there be any logic in insisting on quarantine for travellers from EU countries that have negligible numbers of new cases compared to ours, when transmission within the UK is overwhelmingly likely to come from UK residents and not foreign travellers?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford [V]]

The noble Lord makes a point about different rates of infection and the strategies that we have employed. When the initial rate was low, we were trying to contain the virus. Then the peak happened, and measures at the border were seen to be very ineffective. Now that they are now low again, mandatory self-isolation comes in to keep them low.