Keeping UK borders open for international travel risks undoing “all the good our vaccination programme has done”, without proper testing at airports, according to infectious diseases expert Dr Mike Tildesley.
Dr Tildesley, of the Spi-M modelling group which advises the Government, told Times Radio: “I can understand the need for wanting to keep our borders open for as long as possible, but if we are, there’s a risk there.
“We need to do what we can to minimise the risk, because what we don’t want is new variants coming in that undo all the good that our vaccination programme has done.”
He added: “If we are going to allow travel to continue we clearly need to do something about making sure that testing is much more efficient at airports and making sure that tracing works, and also that people are isolating for the full period, and we need to give people the support to do so.”
