Britain adopts Australia’s isolation rules

Australia is advising Britain on its coronavirus hotel quarantine program.

Travellers arrive at Heathrow airport in January this year. Picture: Getty Images

The British government has sought urgent advice from Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt about hotel quarantine, as the UK ramps up its mandatory 11-day hotel stays for arrivals from more than 30 countries ­beginning on February 15.

Like Australia, the inter­national arrivals into the UK will have to pay for their hotel quarantine, about £800, and people will be strictly confined to their rooms with each floor guarded by security officers.

Australian travellers will be exempt from the new hotel quarantine, but will have to self-­isolate at home for 10 days except if they transit through a country that has been deemed “high risk’’ of COVID-19 variants.

One of those countries is Abu Dhabi, a routine transit hub.

The British government is keeping the list of high-risk countries under constant review in an effort to stop the spread of the South African and Brazilian variants.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock — a known dove in the Boris Johnson cabinet — spoke to Mr Hunt on Thursday to understand the practicalities of the Australian system, credited with keeping the seeding of the virus into the community at near zero levels.

In contrast to Australia, the UK has kept open its transport hubs. In November Britons were banned from holidaying overseas and those returning to the country were subject a 10-day self-isolation period at home. Recently all incoming travellers have to provide a negative COVID test before being ­allowed on the plane and to complete a locator form for track and trace officials.

Under the Australian-style system an expected 1500 British citizens and permanent residents a day returning from 33-high risk countries — such as all of South America, and South Africa — will be sent to hotel quarantine.

Britain is on track to achieve herd immunity — through a fast-paced vaccination program and high infection levels — by July, scientists have predicted.

A British Health Department spokesperson said: “We are now working at pace to secure the ­facilities we need to roll out managed quarantine for British ­nationals returning home from the most high risk countries, and are rightly engaging with representatives from the hospitality, maritime and aviation industry, and learning from our friends around the world.

“In the face of new variants, it is important that the government continues to take the necessary steps to protect people and save lives.’’

The new rules come as the country’s over-70s will have all been offered the vaccine by February 15, with more than 11 million people inoculated.

On Thursday there were 20,600 new infections, but death rates have fallen to about 900 a day, nearly 30 per cent down from last week.

There is also continued confusion about the deaths from the virus because the infection is so prevalent in the community, and people who die of other factors, say a heart attack, are counted as a COVID death if they tested positive in the previous 28 days.

There is pressure on a “cautious’’ Mr Johnson from his Tory backbenchers to release parts of the economy from a lockdown that has been in place, in various forms, since the beginning of November.

Collectively Britons are in a state of deep depression, unable to see other households and only able to leave the house to exercise or buy groceries, with the cabinet split as to the easing of lockdown while the vaccination program is continuing at pace.

While Mr Hancock suggests people should use up stocks of food and limit grocery shopping to once a week, other MPs are demanding parts of the economy should open within weeks as both the death rate and hospitalisation rates have dropped. Mr Johnson has flagged that schools may reopen on March 8, followed by retail, outdoor sport, and some limited social mixing.

Yet other tensions continue within government amid claims its scientific advisers have changed the goalposts and are advocating suppression rather than living with the virus.