Quote Originally Posted by Ram59 View Post
Should the UK have controlled the borders much more in the spring of 2020, yes definitely. But, fully closing them would have been impossible.

I am sick of the media comparing us with the likes of New Zealand in this matter. Pre covid, New Zealand had about 80,000 people per day passing through 4 airports. The UK's figure was around 1 million per day through many airports and ports. Those going to airports are easier to cope with, because they're going through a more strict control, especially in New Zealand, and can be placed on coaches for transferring to hotels. In the UK we have the very difficult problem with around a 100,000 using our ports and the eurotunnel, each day, many of these arriving in their own vehicles and can't simply be placed on a coach. Then you have all of the lorries and vans arriving with all sorts of perishable and non-perishable goods, to consider. What could we have done with them, remember, there are no lorry loads of goods going to New Zealand, it's just ridiculous to compare the two.

That's where we have the issue now. Many are calling for 100% hotel quarantine now, but surely there has to be exceptions, so where do you draw the line? SAGE advises that only by closing the borders will we prevent new strains, but how do we get supplies in and how do we know that these variants aren't already here?
Agree with the NZ thing Ram, but I still think HMG could have done more earlier.