Coronavirus: Will I miss my flight to Italy due to Spain isolation rules?
Simon Calder answers your questions on holiday quarantine and travel insurance claims
Q I arrived in Spain on Saturday for a week and have learnt that I will have to be in quarantine for two weeks from when I return on 1 August. But I have an easyJet flight from the UK to Italy on 10 August, which I guess I will have to change to after 15 August. What do you think?
Mary E
A In your position, suddenly finding that you are obliged to self-isolate for 14 days upon your return from Spain, I might move the Italian flight – but earlier, not later. That’s because the only way to reduce the 14-day quarantine obligation is to leave the UK again before it is over.
This is perfectly legal if you go directly from your place of self-isolation to the airport, sea port or international railway station.
The law says when you arrive in the UK, you must “travel directly to the place at which [you] are to self-isolate” and then quarantine until whichever is the earlier of the 14th day after the day on which you arrived, or the day of your departure abroad.
Unhelpfully, the Department of Health & Social Care online guidance misrepresents the law, saying: “When you arrive in the UK, you will not be allowed to leave the place where you’re staying for the first 14 days you’re in the UK unless you’re arriving from an exempt country.” I have asked the government to change this advice in order to align it with the quarantine rules.
In short, there is no reason why you should not catch your flight on 10 August or any earlier day.
Alternatively, you might want to buy a new flight so that you go direct from Spain to Italy on 1 August; there are plenty of Ryanair links between the two countries with some implausibly low prices, such as €23 one-way from Madrid to Rome.
Note, however, that when you then return from Italy to the UK, if it is before 16 August you will need to need to “complete your sentence” in quarantine for having been in Spain until 1 August.
Q Why are you telling people that everyone coming home from Spain must quarantine, when the Foreign Office advice is clear: it’s the mainland only, the islands are OK?
Name supplied
A In stressful and strange times, I sympathise with a wish to blame the messenger. And I am the first to accept that I have made some mistakes in the travel advice I have given during the coronavirus pandemic.
But on this occasion I am afraid you are wrong. It is not entirely surprising that you and no doubt many other travellers are confused about the rules for Spain, though, given the interesting distinction between the Foreign Office (FCO) and the Department for Transport (DfT) on such an important issue.
On Saturday evening the Foreign Office deemed mainland Spain to pose “an unacceptably high risk for British travellers” and advised against all non-essential travel there. The decision was taken in response to several spikes of coronavirus infections in Aragon, Navarra and Catalonia.
But with rates of infection low in the Balearic and Canary Islands, the FCO believes there is no need to warn against holidaymakers going to Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Tenerife and all islands to El Hierro.
In contrast, the DfT (as informed by the Joint Biosecurity Centre and Public Health England) insists travellers arriving from anywhere in Spain must now self-isolate at home for two weeks. Why should two departments come up with different answers to what appears to be the same question: how risky is travel to the Spanish islands?
Opaquely, the government says Foreign Office travel advice is “based on the risk to the individual traveller” while “self-isolation arrangements are put in place on the basis of risk to the UK as a whole”.
I have been studying that distinction for a long time and can only conclude that, by reducing the numbers travelling to Spain (as this blanket move will do), the experts believe the danger to the UK will be reduced.
I am afraid I disagree: healthy British travellers will be far better off in these lovely islands than they would at home. By exporting non-infectious tourists, the UK would be left with fewer targets for infection.
Q Our family of five are due to go to Porto on 5 August, and travel around central and north Portugal for two weeks. We don’t want to go but are booked with Ryanair. The airline is still flying and we have hotels booked that won’t let us cancel. At what point can we cancel everything and claim on our travel insurance? For example, if we cancel the flights next week but on 4 August the UK government lifts the travel ban, will our claim be paid? Our insurers won’t give us any advice.
The insurance policy tells us to mitigate our losses so we have already cancelled part of the holiday and got our money back, but still have £2,000 in flights and hotels booked. We feel stuck in limbo and are not sure what to do.
Name supplied
A You and hundreds of thousands of other prospective travellers to Portugal are in a thankless position, due to the government’s continuing insistence that (a) mainland Portugal poses “an unacceptably high risk to British people travelling abroad” and (b) anyone travelling to the UK from anywhere in Portugal must self-isolate for two weeks on return.
I am not sure, though, whether you no longer want to go because of the risk of having to self-isolate for two weeks, or because you are fearful of contracting coronavirus on the journey or at the destination?
If the current rules are deterring you, then I urge you to do nothing until the last possible moment. I am fairly confident that the UK government will add Portugal to both the Foreign Office “low-risk list” and the Department for Transport “no-quarantine list” within the next 10 days. If I am right, your trip can go ahead as normal, and you can reinstate the elements you cancelled.
If I am wrong, you have nothing financially more to lose: that 100 per cent cancellation fee for hotels and Ryanair will not change between now and 5 August.
You might even decide to travel against Foreign Office advice, knowing that the European Health Insurance Card will cover medical costs, and see if Portugal has been given the all-clear – as surely it will be – by the time you return.
If, though, you are simply disinclined to travel, I hope that the following apply: you have a decent travel insurance policy issued before mid-March (when the coronavirus crisis really took hold); it covers cancellation costs when the Foreign Office changes its advice to warn against travel to your destination; and that the insurer pays out promptly. But please make sure you know the score before you finally bid farewell to your holiday; £2,000 would be a prodigious amount to lose on top of a missed trip.
Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder
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