Travelling is dangerous and “not for this year”, a health minister has said as he urged people to stay in the UK.
The comments by Tory frontbencher Lord Bethell are likely to fuel confusion following the lifting of the ban on foreign holidays in the latest easing of lockdown restrictions.
People can now go on an overseas break to a limited number of green list destinations without having to quarantine on their return.
But Lord Bethell indicated that people should not be going abroad at all this year, stressing that “travel is dangerous” due to difficulties over segregation during the journey, including at airports.
He made his remarks amid continuing concern over the rise in cases of the highly transmissible Indian coronavirus variant in parts of England.
Speaking at Westminster, Lord Bethell told peers: “Travelling is dangerous. That is not news to us or to the people who get on those planes in the first place.
“We do ask people, particularly as we go into the summer, travelling is not for this year, please stay in this country.”
Nursing academic Baroness Watkins of Tavistock called on the Government to consider the use of electronic “tagging” of people in quarantine, similar to that used in South Korea to contain the spread of infection.
Lord Bethell said he was grateful for the “creative” suggestion.
He said: “The good news is the number of absconding residents at managed quarantine is minimal. It can be counted on one hand and many of them have been retrieved.
“The bad news is that the positivity rate in managed quarantine is far too high.
“It is clearly true that far too many people are getting on planes when they are infected and far too many are catching the disease while they are on their travels.”
