the times | Monday July 27 2020 2GM 9News
Foreign Office changed its advice to warn against non-essential travel to mainland Spain but before quarantine came into effect
Canaries and Balearics but travellers
from there still have to quarantine for
two weeks when they return to Britain.Will tourists in Spain have to return?
No. People already on holiday should
follow local rules. The Association of
British Travel Agents is advising people
to proceed as usual.What about forthcoming bookings?
Tour operators such as Tui have
cancelled holidays to mainland Spain
over the next two weeks. It is going
ahead with trips to the islands but
people can postpone or claim a refund.Jet2 said customers would have to pay
to reschedule holidays to the islands
because Foreign Office advice had not
changed for those areas. People who
booked flights and hotels separately
have no automatic right to a refund.What happens with airlines?
Most airlines are running normal
schedules to Spain but many have
introduced Covid policies, meaning that
they waive the usual charges imposed
to change a booking.Will tourists still be insured?
The change to government advice willinvalidate most policies for those who
have not started their holiday unless
they booked before March. Those
who travel will probably not be
covered for accidents, sickness or
accommodation problems.Can people work during quarantine?
Yes, from home. The conciliation
service Acas advised workers to talk
to their employer as soon as possible.What if you travel through other
countries on your way home?
Anyone who has been in Spain in the
past two weeks must quarantine.Wearing facemasks to keep the corona-
virus at bay does not instil a false sense
of security, according to a new study.
Concerns that people with face cov-
erings may skip other essential meas-
ures, such as hand washing and social
distancing, are a “dead horse” that no
longer needs to be flogged and should
be buried, the researchers said.
The paper, written at Cambridge
University and King’s College London
and published in the journal BMJ Ana-
lysis, said such concerns now posed a
greater threat to public health by
potentially delaying the adoption of
mask-wearing policies.
The UK’s death toll rose by 14 to
45,752, it was announced yesterday, the
smallest rise on a Sunday since the start
of lockdown.
Since Friday people in England have
been required to cover their faces in
shops and it has been mandatory on
public transport since mid-June. It is
“strongly encouraged” in other en-
closed spaces “where social distancing
may be difficult and where you come
into contact with people you do not
normally meet”.
The World Health Organisation
warned last month that masks could
“create a false sense of security that can
lead to neglecting other essential meas-
ures such as hand hygiene practices”.
Under the theory of “risk compensa-
tion” people have a level of risk they are
comfortable with and will adjust their
behaviour to keep it constant. When cy-
cling at higher speeds, for example,
they may wear a helmet.
The researchers examined whether
there was evidence for similar behav-
iour in other settings, such as whether
people vaccinated against human pa-
pillomavirus had riskier sex. They
found this was not the case.
Looking at evidence from 22 studies
on mask-wearing to control the spread
of respiratory viruses, they found that
in some cases groups allocated to wear
masks washed their hands more often.
Three observational studies showed
people tended to move away from
others wearing masks, although thosestudies have yet to be peer-reviewed.
“The concept of risk compensation,
rather than risk compensation itself,
seems the greater threat to public
health through delaying potentially ef-
fective interventions,” Dame Theresa
Marteau of the University of Cam-
bridge, who led the research, said.
The theory has previously been de-
scribed as “a dead horse that no longer
needs to be beaten”, and the authors
said: “This dead horse now needs bury-
ing to try to prevent the continued
threat it poses to public health”.
Other experts pointed out that evi-
dence in this area was still limited.
Susan Michie, a health psychologist
at University College London, said:
“The authors rightly point to evidence
that ‘risk compensation’ is not a univer-
sal phenomenon but, as they them-
selves recognise, there may be contexts
in which it can occur. So the idea of
‘burying it’ is as potentially dangerous
as assuming that it will occur.”
Robert Dingwall, a social scientist at
Nottingham Trent University, said:
“The authors do us all a service by
bringing together a body of work in a
convenient form. Merely piling up frag-
ile evidence does not, though, necessa-
rily make it any stronger.”... but thermal cameras
give poor picture of health
Elisabeth PerlmanThermal-imaging cameras of the kind
being installed at businesses, airports
and hospitals are an unreliable way of
screening and give a false sense of
security, researchers have said.
The cameras detect heat radiating
from an individual’s skin and are de-
signed to judge quickly whether some-
one is infectious. However, the results
may be too variable to be useful. “They
are no more than a visible tool designed
to build people’s confidence in public
places and airports,” Ashley Woodcock,
professor of Respiratory Medicine at
the University of Manchester, said.
Interest in the devices is soaring: Flir,
the largest player in the field, recorded
camera sales of $100 million in the first
quarter of this year, with the devices
costing $2,000 to $15,000, or higher.
Last week Transport for London
announced that bus drivers in the capi-
tal were being scanned with thermal-
imaging cameras. Amazon has startedusing the cameras to identify ill ware-
house workers, and trials are under way
at airports in Paris, Hong Kong, Los
Angeles and London.
Derek Hill, professor of medical im-
aging science at University College
London, is sceptical. “There are not yet
thermal-imaging cameras that are CE
marked as medical devices with the pur-
pose of detecting fever,” he said. A CE
mark indicates that a product conforms
to EU health and safety directives.
Thermal cameras measure skin tem-
perature to within half a degree but not
core body temperature, meaning that
in cool environments such as air-condi-
tioned airports skin-surface tempera-
tures will probably be lower.
Some insist that the purpose of ther-
mal cameras is not to detect, but to act
as an initial screening system. “People
who are identified as having an elevat-
ed skin temperature can then be evalu-
ated using additional tools or told to
take a test,” said Chris Bainter, director
of global business development for Flir.The “arbitrary, willy-nilly” approach by
the United States to testing Covid-
treatments is hampering efforts to
tackle the disease, British scientists say.
Martin Landray, a founder of the
UK’s Recovery trial, which has won
global acclaim for leading the race to
find drugs to tackle the pandemic, said
that the opportunity to pinpoint useful
treatments was being lost.
By randomising patients to different
treatments the Recovery trial estab-
lished that dexamethasone, a steroid,
cut deaths by a third in patients on ven-
tilators. It showed that hydroxychloro-
quine and combined therapy using lo-
pinavir and ritonavir did not work.
Recovery, short for Randomised
Evaluation of Covid-19 Therapy, is also
looking at convalescent plasma, inScientists scorn US drug-test approach
Kat Lay which patients are given transfusions
from others who have recovered. The
idea is that the plasma will contain anti-
bodies, but with falling patient numbers
in the UK, results will take longer.
Professor Landray told The Observer:
“Tens of thousands of people have
already been given convalescent plas-
ma in the US but these treatments were
not randomised. They just give individ-
uals convalescent plasma in the hope it
will work. Vast quantities have been
given and they still have no idea whe-
ther it helps or harms or has no impact.”
The NHS has made it easier to con-
duct widespread trials than the US,
which has no equivalent system.
Professor Landray added: “If you
look at the US, huge quantities of this
treatment has been used on an arbitra-
ry willy-nilly basis. The UK excels be-
yond measure compared with what’sgoing on there.” While there are “lots
and lots of small drugs trials involving a
few dozen or a few hundred patients
going on in the US”, he said there was
“nothing of any substance”.
“They are failing to do large, random-
ised trials and that ends up providing
bad medicine. It makes the practice of
medicine poorer and the outcomes for
patients poorer,” he said.
Tyler Cowen, a US economist wrote
in Bloomberg Opinion: “The Brits are
on course to save the world.”
Professor Landray said: “We realised
doctors would soon be looking for
treatments once cases started pouring
in to our hospitals. If we didn’t quickly
start trials, we would never know if the
drugs that we used were any good. We
had about two weeks to get a pro-
gramme up and running before the tsu-
nami hit the NHS.”News
Mask-wearers do not
skip on other safety
measures, study finds
Kat Lay Health Correspondent The national picture
Daily new lab-confirmed UK casesDaily new UK deaths*Counting of cases has changed to remove duplication. Numbers
now include those tested in all settings. Source: Gov.UKCases Deaths
Total UK* 299,426 45,
257,
18,
17,
5,41,
2,
1,
556England
Scotland
Wales
N Ireland11Jul 20580Jul 2011021445217922560225323769231232477024612576725142674726JACOB KING/PA