Why weren’t people coming through airport quarantined?
I LEARNED all about quarantine when I was a very small child on a P&O boat cruising the Mediterranean in 1950 with my parents. I noticed every time we entered harbour the ship flew a yellow flag and I asked why, to be told it was the quarantine flag and that this has to be shown until the authorities of the harbour we entered were satisfied there were no people on board with illness that could be transmitted.
Later in life, as I became enthralled with the sea, I read of sailing ships held offshore for months until the people on board either died or recovered.
Later I had to go through this procedure of clearing many times in my own boat sailing to many countries (usually cleared the same day).
This brings me to Guernsey, where I live, and the recent attitude
to quarantine in regard to coronavirus.
It was quite obvious that the airport was a major issue as people were supposedly expected to self-isolate for 14 days as quarantine. There was nothing to make me aware of this on my return from Southampton and no staff in arrivals at all. You would have to be pretty dull to believe that this was going to work well, not least because there was no way of enforcing it. And guess what happened? We imported the virus from people coming through the airport where there was no control or instruction whatsoever – certainly not when I came in from that visit to Southampton some weeks ago.
This is a significant failing of the authorities as we now have shot ourselves in the foot for not enforcing proper quarantine and – more importantly – not closing the airport some time back and still not closing it today. We are now controlled by lots of pointless instructions, for instance my gardener cannot work even though he works by himself and has no contact with anyone.
All other islands in the EU have shut their airports or only allow flights taking people out.
Please Gavin explain why the airport is still open, and you have no plan to quarantine people other than in their own house, which is impossible to monitor. The fact is that not shutting the airport will probably cause the death of some people and you will be responsible.
Can you also tell us how you are going to stop Aurigny haemorrhaging cash over the next few months unless you lay off staff and maybe give back one of those new aircraft?
G. M. OLDROYD
St Martin’s.