Baroness Harding, head of the UK¡¯s Test and Trace programme, says
airport testing of travellers is not ¡°a silver bullet to
fighting the virus¡± and would give no reassurance that any such scheme would be
in place by the end of the year.
Harding was responding to a question by Focus Travel Partnership
chief executive Abby Penston on the timing of implementation of border testing during
a webinar organised by the UK¡¯s Federation of Small Business on Tuesday.?
Harding,
chair of NHS Improvement and interim executive chair of NHS Test and Trace, said
that they are ¡°working very collaboratively with the borders team on
testing [on international arrivals] but the ¡°slight rider I would put on that
is the science¡±.
She
added, ¡°A
negative test at a point in time only proves that you are not infectious at
that point of time. If you have been travelling from a very high risk
environment then I would expect that the clinicians will still advise that some
kind of quarantine is necessary, so testing will help us, but I doubt it will
be a silver bullet to fighting the virus and changing the need for us to be
very cautious if people are travelling from very high risk environments.¡±
Harding¡¯s comments come a week after the government said it
would set up a global travel taskforce to look into ways of reducing travel quarantine.
Penston said: ¡°It¡¯s desperately disappointing that there is
no sense of urgency to get testing up and running at UK borders. The UK economy
has supposedly set its sights on having a wider global presence by 1 January
2021. Business travel, trade and tourism rely on international travel, but it
is stagnating while everyone is stuck in quarantine. Too much time has been
wasted whilst decision makers have failed to acknowledge the importance of
business travel, which contributes ?220 billion to the UK¡¯s GDP.¡±?
Martin McTague, policy and advocacy chairman for the FSB said: ¡°When
you think of how many businesses around the country depend on travel in one way
or another, it is vital that we try and free up that entry into the country.
You only have to walk around central London and see the absence of tourism and
the impacts of that on massive swathes of the capital. It is something that we
should be pouring a lot more effort into.¡±?