Draconian travel restrictions destroy joy

The Man Who Pays His Way: The only medical benefit of keeping red list arrivals isolated was to reduce their risk of contracting Covid from the UK population

Moving day: travellers leaving their quarantine hotel at Gatwick airport (Simon Calder)

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you

The French term for “a circuit breaker”, a well-known online translation site tells me, is un disjoncteur.

I daresay the government in Paris has privately used the term to describe its sudden ban on visitors from the UK, which took effect this weekend. On Friday night the Channel ports were overloaded with motorists trying to get to France before the midnight deadline, while airline passengers paid £700 or more for two-hour flights that touched down in time to beat the latest draconian travel restrictions.

The move followed Boris Johnson’s warning last weekend: “There is a tidal wave of Omicron coming.” In response, the French decided to sacrifice the fortunes of Alpine ski operators, Parisian restaurateurs and Riviera hoteliers and close its frontiers to Brits.

The aim: gagner du temps, to buy time in the fight against the Omicron variant of coronavirus. Which was the reasons given by ministers in the UK for bringing back hotel quarantine for travellers arriving from 11 African nations. So let’s see how that went.

Hotel quarantine took effect on 29 November for arrivals from South Africa and five of its neighbours. Everyone arriving in the UK had to pay up to £2,285 for 11 nights incarcerated in a hotel – enlivened with the occasional exercise break in the car park, three meals a day and two PCR tests.

On 6 December Nigeria, the most populous country in Europe, with very strong family connections to the UK, was added. The following day, all travellers to the UK were required to take pre-departure tests again.

Yet the very next day, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “If, as I think is likely, we see many more infections and this variant becomes the dominant variant, there will be less need to have any kind of travel restrictions at all.”

Even as he spoke, hundreds of people were being loaded onto coaches and driven to hotels around southern England to begin quarantine.

By Monday of this week, it was clear that far from protecting us against them, the only medical benefit of keeping red list arrivals isolated was to reduce their risk of contracting Covid from the UK population. 

That day, Mr Javid confirmed to the House of Commons that hotel quarantine served no useful purpose. Yet travellers spent another 48 hours before they were allowed out.

I went to one Gatwick quarantine hotel expecting to find them smiling. Instead many of them were in tears and all seemed simultaneously exhausted, furious and traumatised – feeling they had been locked away to make it seem the government was doing something.

“Right from the time we got off that plane it was a nightmare,” said Diane Herschel, from Winchester. She had been visiting family in South Africa when the red list announcement came.

“We didn’t get to this hotel until the early hours of the next morning after five-and-half hours of queuing.”

Diane is 80, but the system makes no allowance for age.

“For people of my age, surely you could have said you could go into self-quarantine for two weeks?

“People of my age are responsible. We keep to the rules. We didn’t need this extra stress and such a big expense at this time of the year.

“It has taken its toll on me.”

Hotel quarantine also had an effect on a young tech consultant, Sammy Sadek from London.

“All I want to do is go home and cry,” he told me. He went to South Africa to work remotely. While away he contracted Covid and spent two weeks in isolation – then came back to the UK just in time to have to quarantine for 11 nights.

“It was all for a political play. There was no reason for it.”

Buying time can come at enormous cost.

The French response to Omicron does not involve hotel quarantine, but it will divide families and destroy joy.