A kidnap survivor who suffered from PTSD in quarantine has condemned Matt Hancock for making jokes at the expense of people who faced having to stay in quarantine hotels during the Covid pandemic.
Award-winning journalist and refugee Zaina Erhaim says she has "lost all faith in the government" after WhatsApp messages that seemed to make light of the coronavirus quarantine scheme from then-Health Secretary Mr Hancock emerged.
In one exchange with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case in February 2021, Mr Hancock said they were "giving big families all the big suites and putting pop stars in the box rooms".
Mr Case replied: "I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first class into a Premier Inn shoe box."
A few days later, Mr Case asked how many people had been "locked up" in hotels the previous day.
According to the messages published by The Daily Telegraph, Mr Hancock responded: "None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will!" to which Mr Case replied: "Hilarious."
Zaina has been less quick to find humour in the situation, having been billed £3,800 to remain in a single room with her daughter and husband.
The 38-year-old was only required to stay in the hotel having returned from Turkey where her mother had been having surgery via a ten day stop in Croatia.
This should have exempt the family from UK quarantine, except a one hour time difference miscalculation meant they were "dragged aside proudly" by a police officer at Heathrow Airport.
Zaina spent most of her stay trying to hide her anxiety attacks caused by flash-backs to her kidnapping trauma from her then six-year-old daughter.
"Being locked in, I had this severe stomach pain that comes when I'm stressed, I didn't eat for four days," Zaina told The Mirror.
"I was frantically calling 111 and other services. I was asked to breathe over the phone when I was having a breakdown.
"I was locked on the bathroom because I didn't want to speak in front of my daughter. I had to spend most of the days in the bathroom."
Zaina - who was kidnapped and held for two days in Aleppo by pro-Assad forces - said she had been convinced she was in quarantine for the "sake of the public" but she now feels that is not true.
She described being locked in the hotel room, unable to get out without permission from security, as her worst "since I was hiding in the corridor of my Aleppo home from barrel bombing.
"We are literally imprisoned," she said at the time, noting that "flashbacks of being kidnapped" and panic attacks were "unstoppable".
The mum believes special consideration should have been given for those who have been through the trauma of being locked up, while expressing her disgust for the jokey way Mr Hancock spoke about the hotels.
"It is shocking there was no consideration for exceptional circumstances," Zaina said.
"When I started reading about the parties I was crying with anger. I was convinced I was doing this for the sake of the public, but obviously not.
"Regimes are still regimes, whether democracies or autocracies."
Zaina says it is important that the government and ministers like Mr Hancock are held to account for policies made and implemented during the pandemic, and that "it is important these things aren't swept under the carpet."
Others have joined Zaina - who was released early from hotel quarantine after human rights lawyers helped her mount a defence - in her condemnation of the government, including by Julia Lo Bue-Said, CEO of The Advantage Travel Partnership.
“The news reports today on Matt Hancock and a senior civil servant’s exchange make for very uncomfortable reading," she said.
"I am personally shocked and disappointed that a Cabinet Minister could be so flippant and mocking of those in hotel quarantine when people were dying from Covid-19 and unable to visit their loved ones.
“We are coming up to the three-year anniversary of Covid and whilst the industry has made great strides in its recovery, many businesses continue to bear the scars of what was the trade’s most challenging period on record.
"Remarks of this nature, at a time when the travel industry was in such a state of distress, quite frankly leaves me speechless.”
The quarantine scheme, which was eventually brought to an end once the vaccine rollout had been judged to have been affective enough, was used to isolate 214,000 arrivals from red list countries between April and December 2021.
