A passenger pushes a trolley through the Arrival Hall of Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport
(Picture: PA)Forcing travellers to England to quarantine for two weeks helped to reduce the spread of Covid, according to a new study.
In June 2020, travellers were required to self-isolate for 14 days after arrival and the next month some quarantine-free travel corridors were established.
Travellers with Covid returning from destinations with quarantine had fewer contacts than those returning from countries within the travel corridors - making them less likely to pass on the infection to others, a team led by Cambridge University scientists found.
The measure was particularly effective in reducing the average number of contacts for those in the 16-20 age bracket, the study claimed.
Researchers examined the policy by analysing contact-tracing data from NHS Test and Trace and genome sequences.
They compared the number of contacts reported per case before testing positive between travellers from a country which required quarantine and those who did not need to quarantine.
The scientists identified 4,207 positive Covid cases in England between May 27 in 2020 and September 13 in 2020 linked to international travel.
More than half, at 51%, of all imported cases came from just one of three countries: Greece, Croatia and Spain.
Using mathematical modelling, they estimated individuals travelling from a country requiring quarantine had 40% fewer contacts than someone returning from a country that did not require quarantine measures.
Dr Dinesh Aggarwal from the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said: “Although the pandemic now looks very different to how it was in 2020 – with the emergence of new variants offset by increased vaccination – there are still important lessons that can be learned about the effectiveness of quarantine, in particular for future pandemic preparedness.
“Our study shows that while travel restrictions are effective in reducing the number of imported COVID-19 cases, they do not eliminate them entirely.
“It’s likely that one of the main reasons that quarantine measures helped is that they put people off travelling during this period.”
For the most common holiday destinations, except Spain, the number of imported cases dropped when the government removed a country from the safe list and introduced mandatory quarantine.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.
