International travel

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jdc
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Re: International travel

Post by jdc » Sat Jan 23, 2021 5:13 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:31 am
Ministers will discuss at a meeting on Monday whether to tighten restrictions at UK borders - including the possibility of hotel quarantines for travellers

Another one of those headlines from nearly a year ago which for some reason is only just popping up now.
That comparison with Aus highlights nicely just how badly this has gone for us.
While those travelling into the UK are asked to abide by the 10-day isolation and told they can be subject to checks, London mayor Sadiq Khan is among those who have called for the UK to adopt the use of enforced quarantine in hotel rooms.

The policy is among the measures in Australia that has limited the country to just 28,750 positive cases during the entire pandemic, fewer than the UK currently has every day.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:10 pm

JQH wrote:
Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:31 pm
I wonder when the Euros and Olympics are going to be postponed (again).
Tokyo 2020 Games may have to be held behind closed doors, says Lord Coe
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Re: International travel

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:11 am

bagpuss wrote:
Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:35 am
there was definitely no obvious "come and chat and we'll send you a ...". SAS sent out free goody bags* to everyone that registered but it was purely SAS stuff, I was a bit surprised that there was nothing at all from any of the sponsors or other exhibitors in there, but it may have been too expensive to be worth it for them.
Giving stuff out at a normal conference is cheap. Sending it to people scattered around the world is an utter nightmare of customs and regulations (e.g. does this cheap pen need some sort of approval to be imported commercially).

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:53 pm

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Re: International travel

Post by bolo » Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:14 pm

President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19, a senior U.S. public health official told Reuters.

Biden on Monday is also reimposing an entry ban on nearly all non-U.S. travelers who have been in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders. ...

Then-President Donald Trump directed on Jan. 18 those restrictions on Brazil and Europe be lifted effective Tuesday but Biden’s proclamation will rescind that decision.
Reuters

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:15 pm

Some more on that and some other stuff as well
Hancock said on Monday it was “incredibly important that we are cautious at the border...”.

Johnson also hinted that he favoured more comprehensive restrictions, saying the policy should provide “the maximum possible protection against reinfection from abroad”.
Wait this is another one of those stories from early last year which is popping up again oh haha no it isn't.
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Re: International travel

Post by OffTheRock » Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:19 pm

Presumably by the detail in that twitter thread they mean how many groups of people will be exempt. Business travellers, professional sportsmen & women, Tory donors, Stanley Johnson etc. etc.

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Brightonian
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Re: International travel

Post by Brightonian » Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:35 pm

This is a first, I think. France imposing some EXIT restrictions: https://www.france24.com/en/france/2021 ... f-covid-19

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Re: International travel

Post by Opti » Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:47 pm

It's been very nearly a year since we ventured outside Andalucia.
We've forgotten how to even do international travel. We used to be so good at it too.
I doubt we'll we'll do any this year. Even inter-region travel seems a long way off. Maybe inter provincial later in the year. Inter-municipal travel is banned here (with strict exceptions).
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:49 pm

We last travelled overseas to Dresden early March 2020 where we travelled via Frankfurt in both directions - maskless, but sanitising. Seems like a very poor decision now...

I could get in my car right now and drive to anywhere else in the UK. No-one would stop me.

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Re: International travel

Post by jdc » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:10 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:49 pm
We last travelled overseas to Dresden early March 2020 where we travelled via Frankfurt in both directions - maskless, but sanitising. Seems like a very poor decision now...

I could get in my car right now and drive to anywhere else in the UK. No-one would stop me.
They might not literally stop you but there's a fair chance you'd get a telling off. And possibly a fine, depending on how plod felt about your journey.

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Re: International travel

Post by Squeak » Mon Feb 01, 2021 8:18 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:35 pm
This is a first, I think. France imposing some EXIT restrictions: https://www.france24.com/en/france/2021 ... f-covid-19
A first for Europe, I think. Australia's been doing that for most of a year now. In our case, it's to reduce pressure on the waiting list for space in the hotel quarantine system, which still has tens of thousands of people on it.

You need a very special permit to leave Australia and even the excuse of moving to take up a new job overseas might not be enough to get you one.

But then, we also stop people traveling interstate whenever there's a few cases in one state or another.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Mon Feb 01, 2021 8:37 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:49 pm
We last travelled overseas to Dresden early March 2020 where we travelled via Frankfurt in both directions - maskless, but sanitising. Seems like a very poor decision now...

I could get in my car right now and drive to anywhere else in the UK. No-one would stop me.
As of today I could travel anywhere I want in Lombardy. In fact, most Italians can now travel freely within their own regions.

You'll remember that I was in England in November (and a bit of December) for valid but unfortunate reasons; otherwise I haven't been outside Como since the last lecture I had to give in Milan on the 26th of October.

Royal Swing Fest (near Turin, scheduled for the end of April) has just been officially (and predictably) cancelled.
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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Thu Feb 04, 2021 7:18 pm

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Re: International travel

Post by Millennie Al » Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:13 am

Looking at those graphs, there seems to be only two factors that have confidence intervals which exclude zero:
  • International Arrivals (bad)
  • BCG vaccination coverage (good)
Though UV radiation exposure (good) has a confidence interval which just reaches 0.

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:28 pm

Ireland to crack down on travellers from Middle East using Dublin as a backdoor into Britain
The number of people flying to Dublin from Dubai has increased since the UK added the United Arab Emirates to a travel ban list last month, prompting concern that passengers are using Ireland’s capital as a back door to Britain.

“If that’s been abused by UK citizens coming back from other parts of the world to try to take advantage of that issue then we will close that door by ensuring that there is communications with airlines and with UK authorities to make sure that they know exactly where people are coming from through our airports,” Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, told RTÉ.
They should, I don't know, ask people to have some kind of photographic ID with them, and maybe that they give their names to the airlines.
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Re: International travel

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Feb 08, 2021 7:06 pm

shpalman wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:28 pm
Ireland to crack down on travellers from Middle East using Dublin as a backdoor into Britain
The number of people flying to Dublin from Dubai has increased since the UK added the United Arab Emirates to a travel ban list last month, prompting concern that passengers are using Ireland’s capital as a back door to Britain.

“If that’s been abused by UK citizens coming back from other parts of the world to try to take advantage of that issue then we will close that door by ensuring that there is communications with airlines and with UK authorities to make sure that they know exactly where people are coming from through our airports,” Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, told RTÉ.
They should, I don't know, ask people to have some kind of photographic ID with them, and maybe that they give their names to the airlines.
Can't have a hard border under the Good Friday Agreement.

This is what "taking back control of our borders" looks like in practice. Turns out it's incompatible with maintaining an overseas colony in Ireland. Whoops.
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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Mon Feb 08, 2021 7:14 pm

It's not like a country can do anything about travel within a country

(by the way, to enter Italy, you have to declare all the countries you've been in for the previous two weeks, and the entry rules which apply to you are the ones for whichever country on the list has the strictest entry rules applying to it, so if the UK were doing this properly, people entering via this back door with a false declaration could be prosecuted)
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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Tue Feb 09, 2021 1:20 pm

from the Guardian live blog, more news from a year ago which is only just popping up now for some reason, Matt Hancock says:
We’re setting up a new system of hotel quarantine for UK and Irish residents who’ve been in red list countries in the last 10 days. In short, this means that any returning residents from these countries will have to quarantine in an assigned hotel room for 10 days from the time of arrival.

Before they travel, they’ll have to book through an online platform and pay for a quarantine package costing £1,750 for an individual travelling alone, which includes the hotel, transport and testing. This booking system will go live on Thursday when we’ll also publish the full detailed guidance.

Passengers will only be able to enter the UK through a small number of ports that currently account for the vast majority of passenger arrivals. When they arrive, they’ll be escorted to a designated hotel which will be closed to guests who aren’t quarantining, for 10 days or for longer if they test positive for Covid-19 during their stay.

We’ve contracted 16 hotels for an initial 4,600 rooms and we will secure more as they are needed. People will need to remain in their rooms and of course will not be allowed to mix with other guests and there will be visible security in place to ensure compliance alongside necessary support, so even as we protect public health we can look after the people in our care.
We’re strengthening testing. All passengers are already required to take a pre-departure test and cannot travel to this country if [the test] is positive.

From Monday, all international arrivals, whether under home quarantine or hotel quarantine, will be required by law to take further PCR tests on day two and day eight of that quarantine.

Passengers will have to book these tests through our online booking portal before they travel. Anyone planning to travel to the UK from Monday needs to book these tests and the online portal will go live on Thursday.

If either of these post-arrival tests comes back positive, they’ll have to quarantine for a further 10 days from the date of the test and will of course be offered any NHS treatment that’s necessary.

Any positive test will automatically undergo genomic sequencing to confirm whether they have a variant of concern.
People who flout these rules are putting us all at risk.

Passenger carriers will have a duty in law to make sure that passengers have signed up for these new arrangements before they travel, and will be fined if they don’t, and we will be putting in place tough fines for people who don’t comply.

This includes a £1,000 penalty for any international arrival who fails to take a mandatory test, a £2,000 penalty for any international arrival who fails to take the second mandatory test, as well as automatically extending their quarantine period to 14 days, and a £5,000 fixed penalty notice - rising to £10,000 - for arrivals who fail to quarantine in a designated hotel.

Anyone who lies on the passenger locator form and tries to conceal that they’ve been in a country on the red list in the 10 days before arrival here will face a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

I make no apologies for the strength of these measures because we’re dealing with one of the strongest threats to our public health that we’ve faced as a nation.
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Re: International travel

Post by headshot » Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:21 pm

£175 a night for what I assume will be a Travelodge or similar. Ouch.

I stayed at the Heathrow TL last March for about £50. Assuming they are desperate for business, could the Govt not have negotiated a cheaper rate??

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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:27 pm

headshot wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:21 pm
£175 a night for what I assume will be a Travelodge or similar. Ouch.

I stayed at the Heathrow TL last March for about £50. Assuming they are desperate for business, could the Govt not have negotiated a cheaper rate??
Fair enough, I presume you didn't have full board room service but still.
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Re: International travel

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Feb 09, 2021 3:35 pm

Yeah, when I got stuck at Heathrow over New Year all the hotels were doing discounts down to about £50/night for a room. Block bookings should be cheaper.
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Re: International travel

Post by shpalman » Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:42 pm

shpalman wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 7:14 pm
It's not like a country can do anything about travel within a country

(by the way, to enter Italy, you have to declare all the countries you've been in for the previous two weeks, and the entry rules which apply to you are the ones for whichever country on the list has the strictest entry rules applying to it, so if the UK were doing this properly, people entering via this back door with a false declaration could be prosecuted)
Austria is stepping up its response to an outbreak of the so-called South African coronavirus variant in its Alpine province of Tyrol by requiring those leaving the province to show a negative coronavirus test, the government has said.
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Re: International travel

Post by Gfamily » Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:46 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 3:35 pm
Yeah, when I got stuck at Heathrow over New Year all the hotels were doing discounts down to about £50/night for a room. Block bookings should be cheaper.
I'm not sure. The hotel and its staff will have to take special care against cross infection, and I don't know whether there's supposed to be control of the corridors to make sure people stay in quarantine ( 10 days, dec-ine?).

And your £50 rate was open to anyone, whereas people willing to book into a plague hotel will only be travellers who are obliged to stay there, so there may not be enough demand to keep the rooms filled.

I think the question was raised earlier as to whether that's meant to be a full board rate.
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Re: International travel

Post by Trinucleus » Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:54 pm

headshot wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:21 pm
£175 a night for what I assume will be a Travelodge or similar. Ouch.

I stayed at the Heathrow TL last March for about £50. Assuming they are desperate for business, could the Govt not have negotiated a cheaper rate??
I'd hope that includes food, unless people are expected to pop down to the chippie?

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