U.K. Government Quarantined Fewer Than 300 Prior to Lockdown

(Bloomberg) --

Fewer than 300 people who entered the U.K. in the months leading up to the lockdown were taken to government-supported isolation facilities to be quarantined.

Passengers evacuated from Wuhan in China, where Covid-19 first flared up, and 32 people who had been on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship were among those taken to isolation facilities, Chris Philp, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Home Office, wrote in response to a question from opposition lawmaker Stephen Doughty.

The government has faced criticism that it was too slow to respond to the threat caused by the pandemic. The U.K. may end up with the highest number of fatalities in Europe, in part because it tried to keep life continuing as normal while the rest of Europe was imposing restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus.

"The admission that just four flights from two locations, barely a few hundred individuals - out of literally millions of arrivals - were formally quarantined while the pandemic was already raging in a series of locations beggars belief," Doughty told The Guardian newspaper, which reported the numbers earlier.

The quarantine numbers refer to arrivals from January 1 through March 23, when the government lockdown came into force.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.