Over 300,000 travellers may have breached Covid-19 quarantine rules
More than 300,000 travellers arriving in England or Northern Ireland may have breached mandatory quarantine rules just before the height of the Delta variant spike.
Some 300,000 cases were handed to investigators between March and May this year, according to the BBC, while the government was unable to say how many cases were found to have broken the rules – or could not be traced.
The Home Office had previously said that it aimed to visit the homes of all people believed to have breached the emergency Covid-19 policy.
Labour shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the figures “confirm our worst fears” about the government’s “lax border policy”, and accused the Home Office of “gross negligence”.
Traffic light system
The UK introduced its travel traffic light system earlier this year but hopes to scrap this by October.
The system had been designed to lock out alternative coronavirus variants but deeming high-risk countries as “red list” and medium-risk areas as “amber list”.
Over a million people arrived in the UK from amber list countries, between 17 March to 31 May, the BBC found, while some 300,000 cases were passed onto authorities.
While the Department of Health and Social Care were tasked with contacting arrivals to check they abided by self-isolation and testing rules, some cases were transferred to the Border Force Criminal Justice Unit and the police.
Border Force Criminal Justice Unit officer and the police would investigate cases where the contact ended the call, they refused to co-operate, indicated they would break the quarantine or testing rules, or could not be contacted after three attempts.
The Home Office has since hired private contractor Mitie to carry out the home visits to international travellers required to isolate, from contacts supplied by NHS Test and Trace, as has done since April.
“We visit over 99 per cent of the cases referred to this service by NHS Test and Trace,” a government spokesman said.
It comes as prime minister Boris Johnson is set to outline his pandemic plan for the winter ahead, which include plans to scrap coronavirus powers that can impose national lockdowns.