Coronavirus quarantine: Matt Hancock unable to name any countries other than Brazil with worse infection rate than UK

The strategy has been deplored by the travel industry, with one campaigner saying: “Every day of quarantine is hundreds of jobs lost in the sector.” The government is looking at “travel corridors” or “air bridges” – bilateral no-quarantine deals – that would remove the self-isolation requirement for key destinations such as Spain, France, Portugal and Greece, which have much lower infection rates than the UK. It is facing a legal challenge from British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair to reveal the scientific basis for introducing a blanket quarantine scheme. Last week Sir David Skegg, a New Zealand professor of preventive and social medicine, told MPs: “From the point of view of the United Kingdom’s health system, is it going to make things better or worse?