How Britain could REGRET bringing in Australian-style Covid quarantines
How Britain could REGRET bringing in Australian-style Covid quarantines: Oz system has left the country cut off, sparked shambles at tennis Open, and seen security guards spread disease
- New analysis today projected £5 billion loss from December 24 to January 31
- Borders open to Australian citizens/residents who must quarantine for 14 days
- They are forced to foot the bill for their isolation in a room – on average £1,700
- Many haven’t bothered to travel and lucrative Christmas influx eradicated
- Australian Open has become sporting embarrassment due to quarantines
- Quarantine hotels also accused of helping spread disease with lax rules and sex
Britain could regret introducing Australian-style quarantine hotels which have bankrupted the tourism industry, seen the virus spreading inside the accommodation and sparked a tennis Open shambles.
New analysis today projected that the country’s tourism industry lost £5 billion from the lucrative summer period, December 24 to January 31.
Thousands from across the world usually flock to Australia’s beaches to enjoy sunny Christmas and New Year celebrations but that annual influx has been eradicated by swingeing border controls and expensive quarantine stays.
Only citizens, residents or immediate family members can enter the country and they must stay at a hotel for 14 days on arrival and undergo covid tests.
It means that many of the Australians who would usually return home to see family over Christmas haven’t bothered because much of the trip would be in quarantine with guests forced to foot their own hotel bill – £1,700 on average.
A tennis player waits inside his hotel in Melbourne as the Australian Open has been hit by country’s tough coronavirus restrictions
Novak Djokovic waves from the balcony of his Melbourne hotel on Friday where players are undergoing mandatory quarantine
Boris Johnson at a Downing Street briefing last week, left, and, right, tennis players wait to leave the hotel for a training session in Melbourne on Tuesday during their two weeks of mandatory quarantine
In addition, you can’t leave the country unless you receive an exemption, such as business travel or on compassionate grounds.
These economically crippling rules, coupled with strict interstate travel rules, mean that the tourism sector is set to lose 320,000 jobs, Australia’s Tourism and Transport Forum said today.
Qantas, Australia’s flag carrier, has parked its entire long-haul fleet until at least July. It’s share price is down by a quarter on pre-pandemic levels.
Almost 11 per cent of Australia’s GDP is made up by tourism, which is similar to the UK where the sector accounts for 9 per cent.
Airline stocks plunged in London today as Boris Johnson hinted that quarantine hotels were to be introduced to stop the spread of Covid mutant strains wreaking havoc across the world.
Shares in operators including British Airways’ parent group IAG, EasyJet and Ryanair fell sharply as the PM revealed the Government is ‘actively now working on’ the Australia-style proposals.
He warned there is a ‘theoretical risk of a new variant that is a vaccine-busting variant coming in’ and that action will be taken at the border to protect the nation’s vaccination drive.
The Cabinet has been wrangling for days over the shape of the new restrictions, amid fears it will ‘kill’ aviation businesses, leave the UK cut off from the rest of the world, and airport hotels could be packed out within 24 hours if it is applied to all arrivals.
Very few Brits are believed to be on holiday abroad, with the Foreign Office advising against all-but essential travel, but it is a critical time for firms to take bookings.
Downing Street ‘hawks’ including Home Secretary Priti Patel and Health Secretary Matt Hancock are pushing for the hotels where, like Australia, the guests will be made to pay for their own accommodation.
But the Australian example shows that the hotels are not only miserable and tourism-busting, but that they can help spread the disease.
The stars of the Australian Open tennis tournament last week learned the sorrow of being boxed into a room while the sun blazes outside.
Some of the athletes have lost out on their normal warm-up sessions and the event has turned into a sporting embarrassment, with the competition deemed unfair as higher-ranking players have been able to enjoy more luxurious preparation than their counterparts.
Earlier this year, several whistle-blower security guards at the hotels – which are locked down like prisons – described how the virus was actually rampant in the accommodation, with officers being urged not to get tested and others having sex with the guests.
Australia won early praise for locking down the country with draconian measures.
They were able to eliminate the virus – at least it seemed – until it was revealed in July that an explosion of cases in New South Wales was down to the disease spreading in the quarantine hotels meant to contain it.
The local government employed expensive private security firms to keep a watchful eye on the arrivals, only for reports to emerge of sex with guests, shaking hands and sharing cigarettes.
Similar allegations were made in Melbourne, Victoria, with whistle-blowers claiming that profits were put ahead of public safety: a lack of training and appropriate PPE and being urged not take a test because they were needed at work.
Grounded British Airways planes sit on the tarmac at Heathrow airport Terminal 5
A staff member wearing PPE cleans the net at Melbourne Park during a training session for players on Thursday
A group of bikini-clad women are seen enjoying the warm temperature on Sunday at St Kilda beach in Melbourne (pictured) as Australia recorded an entire week without a single new coronavirus case
While proponents of an Australian ‘zero covid’ approach will point to crowds at sports matches and concerts as evidence for their success, for Britain to achieve anything close to their infection rate would be prohibitively expensive.
Elimination of the virus is elusive, Germany was held up as a European success story at first but it has been ravaged by the second wave.
South Korea was also able to achieve a strong hold over the disease for months before it re-surged.
Australia has only recently authorised a vaccine and won’t begin its roll-out until late next month.
Qantas CEO Alan Joycehas said that a jab is going to be necessary to enable quarantine-free travel between countries.
‘It is important to understand that once the vaccine starts, that doesn’t mean you can jump on a plane to Bali the next day,’ Scott Morrison said.
‘It doesn’t mean that the masks disappear, if that is what the public health arrangements are in a particular state or territory, or the quarantine arrangements for returning into Australia will end.
‘It will start at small-scale, it will build up and it will happen over a period of time over the course of this year. Of itself, it is not a silver bullet, because there are still limitations to what these vaccines can do.’
While the world holds out hope for vaccines, epidemiologists have argued throughout the pandemic that a certain level of ‘herd immunity’ is beneficial.
Coronavirus won’t just evaporate and countries like Australia which have cut themselves off from the rest of the world will have to face the virus one day.
Whether a vaccine is able to save them from that reckoning day remains to be seen.
As of Sunday, there were just 129 active cases of Covid-19 in Australia.
