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According to the figures, fewer than 300 people of the 18.1 million who entered the United Kingdom in the three months prior to the coronavirus blockade were formally quarantined.
Passengers on three flights from Wuhan, China, the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, and one flight from Tokyo, Japan, carrying passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, were taken to government-supported isolation facilities between 1 January and March 22.
The figures, provided by the government to the Labor MP and member of the Select Committee on Internal Affairs, Stephen Doughty, show that this totaled 273 people.
Additional data provided to the committee shows that there were 18.1 million arrivals at the UK border by air, land and sea in the same period.
Although that includes arrivals from all destinations, it is understood that the Home Office estimates would still put the number of potentially infected people entering the UK from countries affected by coronavirus in that period at tens of thousands.
Tracking contacts is one of the most basic tables of public health responses to a pandemic like coronavirus. It literally means tracking anyone with whom someone with an infection had contact in the days leading up to the illness. It was, and always will be, central in the fight against Ebola, for example. In West Africa in 2014/15, there were large teams of people tracking family members and knocking on doors of neighbors and friends to find anyone who might have become infected by touching the sick person.
Most people who receive Covid-19 will be infected by their friends, neighbors, family, or coworkers, making them first on the list. It is unlikely that someone will be infected by someone they do not know, passing through the street.
There is still supposed to be a reasonable exposure: Experts originally said that people would have to be together for 15 minutes, less than 2 meters away. Therefore, a contact tracker will want to know who the positive person met and spoke with for the two to three days before symptoms developed and became isolated.
South Korea has large teams of contact trackers and notably persecuted all contacts of a religious group, many of whose members became ill. That outbreak was efficiently removed by contact tracing and quarantine.
Singapore and Hong Kong have also advocated testing and contact tracing, as has Germany. All of these countries have had relatively low death rates so far. The World Health Organization says it should be the “backbone of the answer” in all countries.
Sarah Boseley Health editor
Doughty said: “The admission that only four flights from two locations, just a few hundred individuals, out of literally millions of arrivals, were formally quarantined while the pandemic was already raging at a number of locations it believed to be beggars.
“On what scientific basis were a handful of flights from Wuhan and one from Tokyo selected for their extreme attention? But not a single flight from northern Italy, Spain or the United States?
“The fact that many of these people likely arrived and traveled across the UK with little or no adherence to social estrangement, and with no border controls or protections, just a smell of hand sanitizer, is deeply disturbing. Much less the arrival of 3,000 fans from Madrid as the pandemic accelerated.
However, arrivals continue to this day, with no formal quarantine requirements. It is simply amazing. Who made these decisions? And on what basis?