Scientists advising the government have warned that the partial travel ban targeting countries with new Covid-19 variants is “pointless”, according to a report in The Telegraph.
The report said members of Sage, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, have urged government ministers to extend the ban to all arrivals into the UK.
The ban covers 33 “red list” countries in South America, southern Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Portugal.
A further 26 countries where there is no travel ban already have reported evidence of the the Brazilian or South African Covid strains.
Professor Kamlesh Khunti, a member of the Sage advisory group, told The Telegraph he regards the new measures as “pointless”.
“People could be coming through other countries and there are other variants cropping up all the time,” he said.
“If we had a blanket ban, we would know exactly where we stand.
“A complete travel ban would be difficult but having hotel quarantine would be a fair system that would apply to everyone.”
The Telegraph said it had identified 155 connecting flight routes from 25 of the 30 ‘red list’ countries that would allow people to return to the UK, and potentially sidestep the quarantine hotel restrictions.
Professor Susan Michie, a health psychology professor at University College London who sits on Sage, said quarantine hotel rules must be more comprehensive to succeed.
“The problem about only using measures for these 30 countries is that there could be other countries that just haven’t found variants,” she said.
“It makes sense to have one rule applied to everybody, and as a blanket rule.”