Government contingency plans for dealing with Covid variants of concern will remain in the background, with details unpublished despite ministers promising to set out a framework of arrangements to handle future outbreaks.
That is according to industry sources who have helped inform ministers’ approach to travel restrictions. The government removed all Covid travel requirements from March 18, including the Passenger Locator Form (PLF), and hotel quarantine was due to end this week.
However, any of the restrictions bar hotel quarantine could be reintroduced to deal with a variant, with a simplified PLF expected to be ready to be activated – although it is understood the Home Office has questioned the cost of this.
An aviation source said: “Contingency plans for variants are still a work in progress. There will be more regulatory stuff to come. But the reality is it’s complicated. There are so many variables. One question is how quickly could things be ramped up? Then what does a variant look like and how does it behave?
“It sounds easy until you map it out. There would have to be many, many variants of the contingency plans. To publish and say, ‘This is what it would look like’ isn’t easy.”
The source insisted: “There will be variants, and a form of PLF will be part of a contingency plan. But hopefully it would take something significant to bring the PLF back.”
A second aviation source said: “The contingency measures are the measures we’ve already seen. What would be implemented would depend on the variant. The government won’t be publishing the plans. It’s difficult to give details. There are too many variables.
“Some in the industry would like more detail, but it’s not particularly helpful to publish this. Passengers would start watching the news for any mention of a variant. The government is not going to publish and we’re broadly comfortable with that.
“Regulations to enforce testing stand in the background. The NHS Covid Pass continues. The EU has renewed its Digital Covid Certificate [to June 2023] and the UK is aligning with that. Hotel quarantine has gone but the government could require people to self-isolate at home.”
However, the source suggested: “The PLF is a hot potato. The Home Office has said keeping it live in the background costs money, so it could take a couple of weeks to switch on. If a variant emerges and it takes two or three weeks to reintroduce the PLF, what is the point? It makes a mockery of the system if they can’t track people.”
The government has promised to “maintain a range of contingency measures in reserve . . . to delay any future harmful variants of Covid-19 entering the UK”, but said these would “only be implemented in extreme circumstances”.