Prime minister Boris Johnson confirmed the implementation of the widely rumoured plan during a national address on Sunday (10 May).
Despite giving little detail, Johnson said he was “serving notice” that “it will soon be the time to impose quarantine on people coming into this country by air”.
As yet, no start or end dates for the quarantine has been announced.
The government has already indicated people arriving from the Republic of Ireland will not be made to go into quarantine, while there have been conflicting reports as to whether French nationals will also be excluded.
Trailfinders boss Toby Kelly has put forward what he claims is a “more workable plan” than the government’s planned 14-day quarantining of arrivals.
Kelly called the proposed measures “kneejerk” as “until now, we have allowed hundreds of thousands to arrive unmonitored, untested, unmasked”.
“France is high on the Covid-19 league tables, so why the golden ticket? It has been said we would be unable to enforce such a quarantine,” he argued.
“We await the detail on whether the quarantined are allowed to exercise or go to the supermarket. How do they travel from the airport to their quarantine? Pragmatically, we have accepted we can’t be risk free, all we can do is ameliorate those risks.”
As part of his plan, Kelly proposed temperature tests at departure and arrival airports and the wearing of face masks through airports and on aircraft.
He also suggested Covid-19 tests for passengers on arrival and each traveller with a smart phone or tablet should have to download the government’s track and trace app.
He added: “Beyond that, arrivals will follow the same rules as the rest of us. Britain by virtually any measure is amongst the most affected and most infected in the world, why are we worried about people coming from, or returning from countries that, are for the most part, far less affected?”
