As the UK moves towards the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Home Secretary has called for a ban on international flights landing from virus-hit countries.
According the The Telegraph, Priti Patel has demanded to block entry of travellers from countries with high numbers of COVID-19 infections, such as China, Iran, Spain and the US especially as some 100,000 passengers are reportedly still entering the UK everyday. It is understood that a majority of these passengers are British nationals returning to the country after being stranded across the world. The issue was reportedly raised at a Cabinet committee, but a consensus is yet to be reached.
Even as passengers from affected countries were being asked to self-isolate for two weeks, reports noted that “there were no means of enforcing this and no health checks are being carried out at UK airports”. Currently, sources explain that there are no health professionals deployed at the Heathrow Airport to conduct procedures around thermal temperature checks for all inbound passengers.
“We are most concerned about the daily flights from the US and Iran which are coming in on a daily basis.
“We want to stop non-EEA nationals from flying into the UK. The EU is not a problem for the most part because their domestic lockdowns are so severe,” an official source told Telegraph.
Currently anyone can come into the UK as a tourist from Iran and the only existing limitation is around domestic lockdown wherein people are stopped from going to an airport.
