UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has said ministers are working with Heathrow Airport to find a way for coronavirus testing to reduce the quarantine period.
It comes as the airport unveiled plans for a new testing facility which it hopes will lead to the end of the mandatory 14-day quarantine for travellers returning from countries which have been removed from the UK’s safe list.
Arriving passengers will be able to book coronavirus swab tests and have results sent to them within seven hours. They can then do a second test at home a few days later and those testing negative could leave quarantine five to eight days after landing.
More than 13,000 passenger tests can be carried out each day, which can be further scaled with demand.
Heathrow said it has been working with aviation services company, Collinson and logistics firm, Swissport on a testing facility which is now “ready for use”, adding that the positive economic impact would be “significant”.
Similar double-testing schemes are being used in several other countries including Germany and Iceland. But the proposal needs government approval before it can begin in the UK.
Heathrow Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye said, Prime Minister Boris Johnson needs to “get a grip of our border policy” and give the green light to stop “holding back the recovery of the UK economy”.
Mr Hancock confirmed ministers are thrashing out details on the feasibility of such a regime. He said, “We are working with Heathrow and other airports on this project.
“The challenge is – because the virus can incubate inside your body without coming forward and without therefore a test being positive even if you’ve got it – the challenge is how to do that testing in a way that we can have confidence enough to release the quarantine.
“It is absolutely a project that we are working with Heathrow on.
“I clearly understand the impact of quarantine on so many people’s lives. It is not something anybody would want to do. So I hope that this project can bear fruit.”
A Heathrow spokesman last week accused the government of playing “quarantine roulette” after a surge of coronavirus cases in France and other countries saw ministers suddenly remove them from the UK’s travel corridor list, sparking mass panic as hundreds of thousands of British tourists rushed back home.
Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has also called for much wider testing to try to trace and control the virus given “we’re not going to be able to eradicate this disease”.
He stressed that airport testing “would give you a much, much better way of avoiding the strictness of the lockdown and the quarantine rules that are going to do so much damage to business.”
Heathrow disclosed that the pilot of the new testing procedure could be available as a private service to anyone with a flight landing at Terminal 2, and within a few weeks for those arriving at Terminal 5.
