Scots businessman trapped in Peru gets home and is surprised by lack of corona checks

Now he has make his way home to Motherwell by spending nearly £1000 on a French Government flight from the north east Peru city of Iquitos where he was living, to the capital of Lima and a scheduled Air France flight to London Heathrow.

READ MORE: 8,000 a week still arriving in Scotland – and not one is tested for Covid-19

And he has admitted surprise at the lack of health checks when entering Britain.

"There was no testing, most workers at Heathrow don't have masks on. Compared with the detailed testing and precautions in Peru, the UK appears pretty lax. "However, it may be that, as with many countries, the belief is that the masks don't protect you, so perhaps it's an intentional decision not to wear them."

Mr Livingstone, who had been stuck in Iquitos since a lockdown on March 16, got back home early last week.

"Travelling internally in Peru, they did temperature checks on every passenger," he said. "They were also very strict at the airports about keeping one metre apart, and everyone wore masks.

"Coming into Peru [on March 10] I got a random temperature check and people a few days later said everyone got them."

Mr Livingstone had forced to charter his own planes to help 26 stuck in Iquitos access a flight from the capital Lima back to London. But he said it had to be cancelled because the flight to the onward to the UK, organised by Hong Kong on Friday was set at an incredible price of £2900-a-head.

The government rescue flight prioritised those that were "most at risk" from the effects of coronavirus - namely elderly people and those with underlying health conditions.

But Mr Livingstone from Motherwell said that he and others had "given up on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office coming for us" and had been "trying to make things happen ourselves", adding that the Peru lockdown, which meant it had closed its borders, came without warning.

READ MORE: Trapped in Peru - Scot forced to set up UK coronavirus rescue flights after being 'abandoned' by government

The group had been looking to other governments to help them get out of Peru.

All 26 in Iquitos managed to get on the French organised flight from Lima military airfield.

Concerns for the Peru group surfaced as data emerged that the German government was chartering 30 times more rescue flights than the UK and was flying home more than 40,000 travellers from across the world.

The German embassy in London revealed it had now repatriated 42,000 German nationals from 60 countries on 160 charter flights over the previous two weeks.

The UK had in contrast rescued just 1,400 British nationals from Wuhan and Peru on charter flights, including passengers on two British Airways planes that landed at Gatwick airport last Tuesday.

It has been estimated that 300,000 Britons are stranded around the world as countries closed borders and grounded commercial flights in an effort to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

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