Government challenged on Scots open borders as S Korea benefit from strict controls

Thousands of people are still coming into the UK without any stringent checks as carried out in other parts of the world including airport tests and quarantining.

The Herald has been told the UK Government's position has remained that quarantining of visitors through airports and ports "would not make a significant material difference" to curbing the spread.

Professor Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, believes that a failure to ramp up testing has played a major part in the decision to keep borders open.

And Dr Jonathan Kennedy, director of the global public health programmes at Queen Mary University of London said it was "disingenuous" to believe that testing and quarantining would not help Britain's cause.

Official data from Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 30 showed that 446 of their 10,765 confirmed cases were picked up before anyone left the airport.

From March 16, South Korea started to screen all people arriving at airports, Koreans included.

From April 1 everyone in South Korea from overseas had to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival in an effort to stem the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Before that the country only required those arriving in the country on long-term visas from Europe had to test for the virus and undergo a two-week quarantine. It also insisted travellers from the US had to self-isolate at home for two weeks.

The policy has been seen as crucial to pinpointing Covid-19 cases - with 63.2% of new cases in the previous two weeks classed as "imported".

And to date some one in ten of the 10,765 confirmed cases at that point in the country were 'imported', primarily from Europe.

South Korea has reported no new domestic coronavirus cases for the first time since February.

The government has subsequently relaxed some of its social distancing guidelines.

Among other measures brought in by South Korea were bans on travel from high risk areas while arrivals have to download a government app that tracks their location and requires users to report symptoms.

South Korea with a population of 51.64m had at that point just 247 deaths recorded - a death rate of just five per million. Meanwhile the death rate in the UK is nearly 100 times that at 401 per million and in Scotland it is at 270 per million.

Earlier this week, the home secretary said that enforced quarantine and thermal screening at the border were among possible measures being considered to prevent further spread of the coronavirus as she was challenged over the UK border policy during the pandemic.

The Herald on Sunday revealed two weeks ago that more than 8000 visitors a week are continuing to arrive in Scotland from home and abroad without health checks while the nation continues to be in lockdown and undergo social distancing in the coronavirus pandemic.

Just under two weeks before Boris Johnson ordered a UK-wide lockdown, UK government's chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty said Britain was not banning flights or screening passengers en masse who are returning from Italy as the measures do not “slow down” the spread of the Coronavirus.

He said the measures had failed to halt the spread of the virus in Italy, which had been among the first countries in Europe to impose them on passengers coming from China earlier in the pandemic.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in visits a quarantine station at Incheon Int'l Airport in early April

His comments came as the Government faced criticism for taking “half-hearted” measures by not quarantining and screening every passenger returning from the north of the Mediterranean country, which had gone into lockdown.

Analysis at the start of April calculated that more than 130 countries had introduced some form of travel restrictions since the coronavirus outbreak began including screening, quarantine and bans on travel from high risk areas.

According to Pew Research Center analysis it meant at least 90 per cent of the global population lives in countries with restrictions on non-citizens and non-residents arriving from abroad, while 39 per cent live behind borders that are entirely closed to foreigners.

It is not the first time Professor Whitty has questioned the effectiveness of such controls.

In a 'how to control a pandemic' lecture at Gresham College he revealed his attitude to control measures over travellers and in airports in 2018, in discussing the nation's response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, which claimed the lives of 457 people in the UK the previous year.

He admitted that that was a "near miss" and that it "could have been worse".

He added: "A whole bunch of interventions were called for, like screening at airports and banning travel which are utterly useless. Well, as close to utterly useless as makes no difference."

Testing booths to curb Covid-19 spread at Seoul"s Incheon Airport on March 27.

The Herald revealed last month that Health Protection Scotland, a division of the NHS, gave a warning in 2010 about the nation's ability to contain a "long-lasting" pandemic in a review of the nation's response to the swine flu pandemic.

Professor Pennington said the only effective way to stop virus transmission would be to quarantine all arrivals, as it has been estimated that up to 40% of transmission has been from asymptomatic individuals.

"Ramping up testing as an urgent priority wasn't done sooner enough. We started by quarantining arrivals from high risk areas but soon gave up when the virus had got firmly established. We didn't have the testing capacity to do airport screening, it was needed in hospitals.

"South Korea want to prevent importation because they have stopped transmission in the country. New Zealand is the same. "When we get our transmission rates down to much lower levels than at present we will need to have much stricter controls of incomers, dependent to a degree on how busy the virus is abroad."

Dr Kennedy believes the UK should have learned and can still learn from South Korea's experience. He said the South Koreans had built up a bank of knowledge from tackling previous infectious disease outbreaks including SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2015.

He said: "I think it is disingenuous for anyone to say that testing at airports would be ineffective. It would allow the authorities to identify people with a fever, test then, and make sure they follow the guidelines.

"It is the same with strictly enforced quarantining of people coming into the country or stopping travel into the country altogether. Clearly all of these measures would reduce the spread of the virus - although the benefits they bring has to be weighed against the social and economic costs."

Dr Kennedy, a member of the independent Centre for Health and the Public Interest think tank added: "This seems to be yet another indication that the government are unwilling or unable to take decisive action to stop the outbreak spreading. It is particularly galling because countries such as South Korea have shown that this is possible."

Foreign diplomats based in Seoul visit Incheon Int'l Airport to see S. Korea's screening procedures on March 13

During a question and answer session last week, Priti Patel was asked by the home affairs committee chairman Yvette Cooper whether the science of other countries that ask people to self-isolate on arrival is different to ours.

She said: "Every country has been at different stages. Every country takes different scientific advice, and they have to make their own judgments accordingly."

She went on to indicate that the level of aviation travel to the UK was a factor in decision-making - with London's Heathrow Airport among the top ten busiest airports in the world "First of all, we are not similar to many of those other countries — we should be very clear about that — in terms of traveller and passenger flows. It is a fact that the UK has among the largest number of international arrivals — very different flows from those of some of the countries that have been mentioned.

"That is obviously a key consideration of SAGE [the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies].

A UK government spokesman said that on quarantining visitors, the position remains as has been put by the First Secretary of State Dominic Raab.

He said "We've looked at this regularly and asked this question actually quite a few times. So far, the advice has come back that actually it wouldn't make any significant material difference to stopping the spread.

"It may become more relevant as we progress through this crisis and as we bear down on the transmission rate within the UK."