Scottish Government’s Covid quarantine system is leaving us vulnerable to fresh outbreaks – Willie Rennie

Did failures to carry out spot checks on people who were supposed to be quarantining after overseas travel contribute to the coronavirus outbreak in the west of Scotland, asks Willie Rennie.

Travellers arriving from overseas must check if they need to go into quarantine (Picture: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

Quarantine statistics published this week showed just one individual had been issued a fixed penalty notice for breaching quarantine after returning from abroad.

Last month Celtic footballer Boli Bolingoli publicly apologised for failing to quarantine when he got back from Spain. He said: “I am guilty of a major error of judgement. I know what I did was wrong and I know that I must now deal with the consequences.”

He risked the health of his team mates, his community and the immediate future of sport in Scotland. The truth is people can be selfish in all walks of life. But in his case, it was possible for armchair detectives to piece it together. Bolingoli was pictured by a fan in the front row of a flight to Malaga. Shortly after he was seen taking to the pitch against Kilmarnock.

Bolingoli’s blatant disregard for the rules and other people’s safety was seemingly only uncovered because of his high-profile career. Given not everyone returning from a holiday in a country listed as an infection risk will be due on television to play Premiership-level sport or have a troupe of fans monitoring their every move, we need a system we can trust in and know is working efficiently behind the scenes.

The Scottish Government’s system for spot checking people who return from abroad is just not up to the job. It’s been playing catch-up from the very first moment it was launched. We are all relying on it to keep us safe and that’s why it’s incredibly important that it is sorted out.

A few weeks after the spot-check scheme was launched, the Justice Secretary told the Scottish Parliament’s Health Committee that “public health officials are carrying out spot checks... they are contacting approximately 20 per cent of travellers”. It emerged later that not a single check had been conducted on those quarantining. The Justice Secretary then told us the target was not 20 per cent, but 20 per cent up to 450 checks. After that inauspicious start, you would expect that the full might of government would have been applied to getting the process in order. Two months after that episode, and so long into this pandemic, this system should be bedded in and operating efficiently. It seems not.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Secretary told me there would be more checks even though Public Health Scotland said there would be fewer. The Justice Secretary then announced the recruitment of 25 new contact tracers for a system he claimed was already robust.

I believe it’s reasonable to expect the Government to have a handle on this as we head into autumn, but that simply hasn’t happened.

Their position on contacting people under quarantine order is chaotic and their targeting is volatile and inconsistent.

Quarantine spot checks are failing to find hundreds of people and it appears in most of those cases the Government has been doing little to absolutely nothing about it.

I’ve sought answers from the First Minister, the Health Secretary and the Justice Secretary on the glaring gap between the number of people their contact tracers can’t find and the tiny number of cases Public Health Scotland passes to the police for further investigation, but none of them have been able to give me a meaningful answer.

The Health Secretary said if the contact tracers cannot reach an individual who should be quarantining “by either the second or third phone call or by email, they will then pass on that information to Police Scotland”.

Yet we know the tracers have so far lost 821 people who arrived back in the country and were required to quarantine but only 125 ‘cases’ have been referred to the police. The bulk of that information exchange has only happened since I started asking questions. The Government still can’t tell us how many people those cases cover.

If contact tracers can’t find people, have they just been giving up? We all need to have confidence in this system and the strength of our measures to catch cases coming in from abroad if we’re to edge back towards normality comfortably.

The Government also can’t say how many of those quarantining actually got ill. Tracking the health of these individuals is important to understanding the extent to which that system is preventing spread, where we might be importing the virus from, and which countries might be less of a threat than thought.

It’s not good enough and it’s leaving us vulnerable. When I asked the First Minister this week she was unable to say whether the failures of these spot checks had led to the outbreak of cases in the west of Scotland. That’s almost a million people whose actions and movements are limited right now and we don’t know if the faults in this system have played a part. Every case that slips through the net because this system let it go without follow-up could cause a spike.

Trust in spot checks is important if we’re going to keep the travel industry alive. It’s important for keeping us all safe and for ensuring we are making smart decisions on our choice of air corridors.

As we struggle to protect the recent precious progress with the pandemic, ignoring these failings is not an option. Ministers must address this now or they risk an almighty own goal.

Willie Rennie is the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and MSP for North-East Fife

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