Passengers have reported little or no health screening when arriving at Heathrow, in contrast to other airports around the world which are making use of technologies such as heat screening cameras.

For example, one Twitter-user said: “Now we have at least five reports that Heathrow airport aren’t checking passengers in any way, including those arriving from ‘coronavirus hotspots’ such as New York. Undoubtedly many of these passengers are then dispersing round country via public transport. Someone needs to lead on this.”

In an interview reported in The Times, John Holland-Kaye said he could understand why passengers are confused. 

“That’s something you would see at other destinations and people assume that must be a higher level of testing than Public Health England does,” Holland-Kaye told The Times.

“Public Health England has obviously looked at this and decided that it’s not appropriate for testing, but I can completely understand why passengers would wonder why they saw cameras at the airport where they got on the plane but didn’t see them when they arrived.”

He added it would be “helpful to everyone” for nations to agree what health testing should take place at airports.