Price of domestic normality is strict Covid-19 travel quarantine rules, Scotland's National Clinical Director warns

Scotland’s National Clinical Director has warned that the price of domestic normality is strict travel quarantine rules for all travellers returning to the country, as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon unveils new Covid-19 measures.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, the country’s National Clinical Director Jason Leitch backed the new measures, seeing it as crucial in ensuring new cases and strains of the virus are not imported into the country. 

The price is international travel restrictions to get domestic normality back.

Warning about the dangers of not taking this step, Leitch explained how “it doesn’t matter about what geography you use. It doesn’t matter about national boundaries. The virus doesn’t care.”

The new restrictions will see Scotland introduce a “much more comprehensive” and “managed quarantine,” requiring anyone arriving in the country to say where they’ve come from and, if it’s a non-UK nation, to self-isolate in a hotel. 

Leitch reiterated Sturgeon’s previous calls for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to adopt a similar approach, as the rules will be more complex, and potentially less effective, if it’s just a Scotland-wide proposal. 

So far, the UK government has only supported requiring people arriving from the 33 countries on the so-called ‘red list’ of high-risk nations to quarantine in hotels. Johnson and his team have not given any indication that those plans will be expanded in the near future.

The UK is currently under a national lockdown, with all four nations imposing tough restrictions as they battle a surge in infections due to new strains that have entered the country. Since the start of the pandemic, the UK has reported 3.8 million cases of the virus and 106,564 deaths from Covid-19.

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