Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the (a) proportion and (b) number of people likely to have covid-19 that arrived in the UK from (i) Wuhan, China and (ii) Lombardy, Italy in each month since 1 January 2020.

On 23 March, SAGE advised that the effect of closing borders would have a negligible effect on spread of COVID-19, based on the fact that numbers of cases arriving from other countries were estimated to be insignificant in comparison with domestic cases, comprising approximately 0.5% of total domestic cases. The Home Office and SAGE have been keeping these figures under review. The numbers of passengers arriving in the UK are extremely small, and as such, there is uncertainty in any estimate at such a low level; however, we are confident that the percentage remains under 0.5% of total domestic cases.