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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

Peter wrote:

What I don’t get is why the UK, having brought in the sudden quarantine on returnees from Spain are not allowing the option of a CV19 test to escape the quarantine.

I suspect there are a number of reason. None insurmountable, but given the lack of enforcement they probably don’t bother.

1. A single test won’t be enough. You’ll need one test a few days after returning to pick up an infection caught in the day before or on the day of travel. The second test would be maybe 5-7 days after returning home, so you’d need to serve that amount of time in quarantine anyway.
2. A single test isn’t enough, due to false positives. Two test are required to give reasonable assurance (but not 100%). For those (in 1 above) who caught it just before or while travelling home, they’d only have 1 test (the later one) with any chance of detecting it. To do that properly, you’d need a third test!
3. If I understand it correctly, the quarantine in the UK is in your own home. So you’ll have people traveling on public transport to go to their covid testing!
4. Very few people will bother anyway because there is little enforcement. So those who don’t care will just ignore it anyway even without a test.

The only way to do quarantine properly is like NZ or China. Do a state run quarantine for 14 days with early release with a second test after day 5. But very few governments want to do that.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Indeed, and there is zero enforcement of the quarantine anyway.

The astonishing statistic is that 600k Brits are now “trapped” in Spain. That is about 1% of the UK population. It is rather more than 1% of the UK population capable of walking up the steps to an airliner. But the UK quarantine ended only on 10th July, so these people, desperate to escape the UK, must have travelled to Spain in the last couple of weeks or so! Easyjet etc must have been incredibly busy.

Sure the tests aren’t perfect but neither is the quarantine even if there was 100% compliance. There is a massive incentive to not comply with it, or to not disclose symptoms if they are noticed (loads of people go on holiday, go out socially, etc, when ill with a temperature). Noncompliance is very high among young people who mostly believe they can’t get it. A test at the airport would probably be equally effective.

One other interesting thing is that everybody I saw interviewed in Spain (on TV) was young. That isn’t the typical Brit holidaymaker in Spain. It looks like the older ones are still afraid of travelling. This also means the quarantine isn’t really going to work…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The astonishing statistic is that 600k Brits are now “trapped” in Spain.

These people get it.

Cobalt wrote:

Then test them after two days…

Austria apparently lets them in if they have a valid test and does not insist on quarantine. The trouble is that every country does it differently.

But dublinpilot has listed the reasons for this much better than anyone else so far.

There is a point. I travelled from Bulgaria to Switzerland yesterday and the only two times in the 5 weeks I was there that I really would have thought to be risky in terms of exposure to people who possibly could be infected was the actual travel itself.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 27 Jul 07:56
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

The quarantine measure imposed by the UK is much too broad in my opinion. Many Brits on the Balearics, and the level of infections is remarkably low here. They could have easily excluded certain parts of Spain.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

I think the argument is that holidaymakers would trivially avoid it by flying and then renting a car. Or getting a bus which is “even better” Remember, these people have paid lots of £££ for a holiday and are highly motivated to have it. It is like the Feb/Mar 2020 ski holiday situation; tens of thousands went in the face of the virus rapidly spreading.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I realise this might be naive but would it not be better to do a temperature test and an oxygen level test as each person returns.
You then test them every day for 14 days in a similar manner. But instead of having teams going to the people you could sell them the equipment and provide an app for them to upload the results to do their own testing.
Would an app be able to set off an alarm when set temperature or a low oxygen level Is recorded? And would it work?

France

What I saw on TV was that the blood O2 level was not a good indicator until you were half gone and ready for the ICU, or at least oxygen – if the reading was taken at rest. If however it was taken after walking some tens of m, it was indicative.

Just now they had some “professor” who advises the Scottish (devolved) “government” saying that the virus test will not show positive on subjects who are asymptomatic spreaders. I could not believe what I was hearing. And of course the BBC presenters didn’t pick up on this point, either…

A temperature check would pick up a lot of cases, but maybe only of the order of 1/2. Spain should be doing it on all arrivals; that would pick up those who know they are ill and who still travel. Croatia (LDRI) isn’t doing anything on arrivals, but they were temperature testing departures!

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I think the argument is that holidaymakers would trivially avoid it by flying and then renting a car.

Not feasible for the Balearics

Peter wrote:

A temperature check would pick up a lot of cases, but maybe only of the order of 1/2. Spain should be doing it on all arrivals

100% temp checked on arrival at Palma.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

This looks really seriously bad

There could be bad reporting e.g. is it really 75% of all survivors which have the heart attack signature?

The two studies are from Germany so maybe @medewok might know more.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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