Covid-19

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support the government plans for travel quarantine to reduce the risk of importing new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that may be more contagious and get around vaccine-induced immunity. Both Australian and New Zealand studies have shown that, despite testing prior to flights, the risk of transmitting the virus on flights, particularly long-haul flights, remains as shown by the New Zealand study. My question relates to airline crew, particularly on long-haul flights. What measures do the Government plan against the risk of transmission from an infected crew member?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Lord is, as ever, cutting to the chase. The role of hotel staff, transport to and from airports and the flight crew themselves is incredibly important. As the noble Lord probably knows, the outbreak in Melbourne that hit Australia hard was caused in part by the bus drivers from the airport to hotels becoming vectors of infection. That created an unfortunate outbreak, which was hit extremely hard with a long lockdown to squeeze out the outbreak. We are putting in all the right, responsible measures to segregate crew, keep them apart from the rest of the population and ensure that they are, wherever possible, vaccinated against the virus so that they cannot be vectors of transmission.