View
comments
Forcing travellers to stay in quarantine hotels may have prevented thousands of potential Covid infections and deaths, a new report suggests.
The report, from No10's scientific advisory group SAGE, collected evidence from international studies on Covid transmission in hotel quarantines.
Britain's hotel quarantine scheme has been controversial, with MPs slamming them as prison-like and authoritarian. Those who were forced to stay in them were made to pay up to £2,000 out of their own pocket.
Yet the latest study suggests that, despite their faults, they may have protected the UK.
The SAGE file, released by the Government today, cited a study on hotel quarantine breaches in Australia and New Zealand.
The study found that there had just been one breach of the countries' combined hotel quarantine efforts per 173 Covid positive cases among travellers, as of March 2021.
This means the vast majority of travellers with Covid were kept in the quarantine system, rather then spreading the virus to hotel staff or other guests or the wider community.
A SAGE report suggests controversial hotel quarantine rules may have prevented thousands of infections reaching the
