Yeah, we have several residents at work from Singapore who all went back when the Singapore government recommend all citizens return and a couple of them said that whilst it was tough doing 2 weeks quarantine, had they not been locked in hotels they would have likely broken it if they were doing it at home as they would have been tempted to go out just to get fresh air and have a walk.
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Sounds like the rubber is hitting the road in Germany over vaccine access, coalition partners not at all happy with the EU.
I think it has been almost two weeks since AZ allegedly failed to meet the ‘crystal clear’ delivery schedule they were bound to in the contract. Yet I have not heard of any legal action commencing, just threats. I suspect there is a strong disinclination in Brussels to do anything so awkward as a discovery process.
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Bang on time.
10 months ago 
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Those countries you have listed which locked down borders and enforced guarded hotel quarantine, against a couple of island nations close to home that could have taken a similar approach but chose not to.
And those 6 nations, amounting to a population of ~180m, practically show up as noise. Absolutely no chance there is a correlation there. None.
Actually to be fair, its probably the whole combination of control measures these countries have taken, not just border control and quarantine, like test and trace being taken seriously.
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Even the enforced quarantine in these countries has been a gradual evolution.
In NZ flights in are limited by number of spaces available at hotels. There is currently a 2 month waiting list. You cant book a flight here without a reservation. As soon as you are off the flight people are bused directly to the hotel. After a couple of cases of sleeping security guards, people escaping out windows. This is now managed by the army.
I park by one of the hotels (as no one else wishes to park there).The army presence is quite strong. A very visible deterrent. Manned CCTV cameras have also been set up all around to track anyone that does escape (you walk down the street and they follow you).
Unless you are returning to NZ to live (something like a minimum of 6 months), the hotels are charged as an expense to the individual. Something like 1-2K per person. Individuals are tested twice. Once on day 3 once on day 10. Before being free to leave on day 14. A recent rule change was that for the last 3-4 days individuals are confined to their room (to prevent catching it in the hotel).
Finally they are thinking about treating hotels as batch lots. All individuals at a hotel, are all day 1 together, no one new arrives till that batch has left.
Its one of those things that sound simple on the face of it, but as you dig down it becomes more complex.
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Even those countries mentioned, with a population almost 3x that of the UK their visitor numbers are currently 1/6th of those of the UK.
I agree that the UK ought to have more stringent checks on those arriving but enforcement of quarantine is logistically challenging.
But to be fair, does not mean its difficult, you do not do the right thing. It might take time to get it right, but if you do not even start to do it and adjust and learn along the way, you will never get it right. Covid-19 is one thing, but what if an even bigger outbreak of another virus come along in future? If everyone don’t start learning best practices or at least start trying and learning, how are you going to assure people that you have learnt? I think we all appreciate that governments around the world are trying their best, at least most but there definitely is more that everyone can do, even those countries who are supposedly doing better. Because until everyone is safe, no one is safe.
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I agree, I wasn’t advocating in favour of not quarantining, just that it is logistically challenging and, as far as I know, no other country of equivalent size and equivalent inward visitors has done so, yet. Has France or Italy, for example?
I agree, and the UK and France and Italy, and any country for that matter, should have done so long ago…but putting aside other countries, if talking about the UK, it has more resources than many countries to start doing these things, it is difficult definitely, but you have to start trying and learn and get better at it. We cannot be saying hey others are not doing it or its too difficult…you know…we cannot expect governments to create miracles and the virus is gone but as law-makers, if they cannot even start doing the right thing or make the right laws (nevermind first the enforcement) but if the first step is not even taken, I think its very hard to get more citizens on board with their strategy.
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I mean Singapore is only an island of 5.5mil people but to offer a small piecemeal of how we learn. From the beginning of the pandemic, the government told us not to wear masks unless necessary. That became quickly a criticism of the government as the pandemic grew. It was obvious that we do not have enough stockpile of masks and countries were not exporting masks to us by the time we realized we needed more. We even had a minor episode with Taiwan who refused to export the masks to us even we owned those machines in Taiwan. We adjusted and long story short, now we have more than enough masks and periodically the government issued free masks to people.
I know are just a small country but my point is no governments have any idea what will get rid of this virus, but we have to move along with data and learn from others and start doing something. If even the government look at something that is supposedly right and say oh its too difficult and not do it…how will the citizens be expected to do what is right (although I would not advocate a tit for tat kind of attitude in current times).
Imagine if Britain had taken the same steps as NZ or Australia or Taiwan at the beginning of the pandemic. Closing all borders - quarantine for any arrivals - a decent contact tracing system etc The amount of lives saved would have been in the tens of thousands. This is not having the benefit of “hindsight” - There were real world examples of how best to deal with the virus early last year - which they ignored. And that killed people.
I wish I could get a quid for every time some bumbling minister will use the phrase " in hindsight" this coming year. By Christmas I would be a millionaire Rodney.
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Whilst stricker border controls aren’t the be all and end all for stopping the spread of coronavirus, it does play a massive part.
Limit the numbers coming in and control the movement of those that do come in gives a stronger aspect of controlling any potential outbreaks before they get out of hand purely because your limiting the chances of it entering the country and by limiting the chances of the virus spreading among the local population by ensuring new arrivals are kept seperate until you can be reasonably certain that they aren’t carrying the virus.
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Logistics wise it is not as difficult as people would have you think. Most things are already in place, it is just having the ability to link them together.
Plane lands at airport, people disembark and go through immigration to buses which ferry them to a designated hotel. Go into room and the door is locked for 2 weeks.
The hotel is already set up for providing the accomodation. New linen, towels are delivered and left outside the door every few days and you are responsible for changing the linen yourself. Food can be easily provided either by the hotel itself if they have the kitchen/catering facilities to provide meals, if not there are plenty of catering companies that usually provide the airlines with food which will be losing trade due to the downturn in travel, so why can’t they be contracted to provide meals to the hotels?
Not entirely difficult plan that I just came up with, and I’m not even that smart - so imagine what smart people would be able to come up with.
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But you are considerably smarter than the entire UK Government
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Put together.
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Enforced quarantine started in April didn’t it? Lessons learned from both NZ and Aus but the army should have been running this from the start. Not some low wage security guards that can’t keep their dicks in their pants, or just, can’t keep awake.
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That’s one of the facts that is often overlooked by those kicking the government and the figures. Heathrow is utterly huge. Could have shut it (and should have done to all non UK nationals coming home) but there’s more to governance than just doing the blindingly obvious. Apparently.
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Yes, I think quarantine is a significant logistical challenge and one that is likely to be more damaging than beneficial, so ought to be used only in extreme circumstances and probably only for arrivals from particularly at risk regions.
Where I think the government has royally screwed up is with the lack of screening. That is much easier to introduce and yet the government did very little here for far too long. Simple measures such as temperature checks upon arrival, lateral flow tests when they became available, requiring negative PCR tests within 48 hours of travel, these measures would have been much easier to roll out and yet the government sat on its hands far too long.
I disagree. It simply needs to be a decision that is taken and allocate resources accordingly. In my mind the numbers are that high because people are free to travel. Make it more difficult and the numbers will fall further.
Also worth noting that all of the nations that have implemented tougher measures are performing better economically as well.
I honestly don’t think there is a valid argument to not doing this at all. It is another massive government fail that should ultimately be presented as a cost in terms of lives as well as £
I repeat, I’m not arguing against doing it. I’m just presenting reasons as to why it isn’t something that is easy to put on place in a short time frame.
There were other measures, earlier on, that would have been much easier to implement within a very short time frame and which the government shat the bed on. The quarantining of all arrivals for 10-14 days in hotels is a much bigger logistical challenge involving working with a number of different sectors and private companies.
Given that it takes so long to organise, yes the government should absolutely have been initiating these plans earlier, but I’d rather they now took the necessary amount of time to get it right than try and do things too quickly and make yet more mistakes.