The quarantine laws, which are formally known as The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations 2020, will require people to self-isolate for 14 days after arriving in the country
Travellers arriving in the UK will now be required to self-isolate for 14 days under Government measures to guard against a second wave of coronavirus.
All passengers – bar a handful of exemptions – will have to fill out an online locator form giving their contact and travel details, as well as the address of where they will isolate.
The legislation comes into force more than four months after the first people in England tested positive for coronavirus.
The new measures have come under fire from several airlines with British Airways boss Willie Walsh beginning legal proceedings against the government.
The BA owner has said the rule for incoming travellers has “torpedoed plans to start flying July”.
Willie Walsh, the chief executive of BA’s parent company IAG, told Sky News on Friday that there had been no consultation with the industry prior to the legislation being brought in.
He said: “We think it is irrational, we think it is disproportionate and we are giving consideration to a legal challenge to this legislation.”
The Government has outlined a list of people exempt from new quarantine rules in England.
The exceptions include the following:
– Transit passengers: someone passing through the UK en route to another destination without setting foot here.
– Road haulage workers or road passenger transport workers: this includes those driving goods vehicles and freight, and a “public service vehicle driver”, described as some who drives a vehicle adapted to carry more than eight passengers.
– Seamen, pilots, inspectors and ship surveyors: travelling to the UK for work, or who are repatriated.
– Air crew: in the UK for work.
– Civil aviation inspectors: in the UK while on inspection duties.
– Shuttle staff, operational and rail maintenance workers: in the UK for work.
– A Crown servant or government contractor: required to undertake essential policing or essential government work in the UK within two weeks of their arrival.
– Extradition escort: including a representative of any territory travelling to the UK in order to take someone into custody.
– Essential or emergency workers: including those relating to water and sewerage services, utilities, energy, chemical weaponry inspector.
– Someone carrying out a critical function at a space site, an aerospace engineer.
– A postal operator: travelling to the UK in the course of their work.
– A worker with specialist technical skills: where those specialist technical skills are required for essential or emergency works or services, such as continued production, supply, movement, manufacture, storage or preservation of goods.
– Someone receiving healthcare, someone accompanying them, or an organ donor: where they will travel directly to before self-isolating, likewise someone transporting human cells or tissue for healthcare purposes.
– Health or care professional: working within 14 days of their arrival in the UK.
– Someone taking part in a clinical trial.
– Someone working in ‘essential infrastructure industries’: including telecoms and technology.
– A person who works in the UK but lives abroad, or the other way around, and travels between the two countries at least once a week.
– Seasonal agricultural or farm workers: including those processing crops, packing and harvesting.
