The Times - UK (2021-12-06)

6 Monday December 6 2021 | the times

News

Sajid Javid faced demands to hold a new
crackdown on rogue companies offer-
ing PCR travel tests who are “conning”
passengers on the government’s
approved list of providers.
Firms are offering tests for as little as
30p to get to the top of the list of provid-
ers for passengers looking to book a
post-arrival PCR test. After clicking the
link on the government website to book
a test with the firm, however, the 30p
test offered by a company called 0044
Covid Test was unavailable and the
next cheapest cost £59, almost 200
times as expensive.
The health secretary is also under
pressure over the lack of hotel rooms
for passengers who have to book hotel
quarantine after returning from coun-
tries on the government’s red list. A
government source said that only
4,000 hotel rooms were available des-
pite an increasing number of countries
being added to the red list, the latest
being Nigeria, from 4am today. “Hotels
have been reluctant to give up rooms
because it’s a busy time ahead of Christ-
mas,” a travel industry source said. The
Department of Health and Social Care
(DHSC) said it was “ramping up capa-
city as quickly as we can”.
Companies have capitalised on a
huge increase in demand for PCR tests
after the government’s decision to rein-
troduce Day 2 tests for all arrivals enter-
ing the UK last week in response to the
Omicron variant. When the practice
emerged in the summer Javid ordered
officials to remove companies from the
government’s website who were
attempting to manipulate the list.
After the new rules were introduced
last week the health secretary again
promised MPs that companies who
broke the rules would be “delisted”. But
last night The Times found several firms
still offering cut-price tests that were
not available on their websites.
A coalition of consumer campaign-
ers, Conservative MPs and travel in-
dustry leaders called on Javid last night
to act immediately to ensure that pas-
sengers are not ripped off. Sir Graham
Brady, who chairs the powerful 1922
backbench group of Tory MPs, said:
“With these new testing requirements
being introduced it is essential that the
government acts quickly to establish
the credibility and reliability of the
companies involved. Passengers de-
serve better than the testing chaos that
was experienced in the summer.”
The consumer group Which? urged
the government to regulate the testing

Another pandemic could prove to be
both more contagious and more lethal,
one of the inventors of the Oxford-
AstraZeneca vaccine warned yesterday.
Dame Sarah Gilbert said that scien-
tific advances made in viral research
“must not be lost”, as the former prime
minister Tony Blair urged the inter-
national community to “organise glob-
al genomic sequencing” to act faster on
new variants and boost jab delivery
worldwide.
Gilbert, delivering the 44th Richard
Dimbleby Lecture, said: “This will not
be the last time a virus threatens our
lives and our livelihoods. The truth is,
the next one could be worse. It could be
more contagious, or more lethal, or
both.
“We cannot allow a situation where
we have gone through all we have gone

The NHS will be in a “very difficult

position” if the Omicron variant causes

a surge in patients needing hospital

care, the president of the Royal College

of Emergency Medicine has warned.

Dr Katherine Henderson said that

hospitals were already struggling to

cope as Christmas approached and that

a sudden increase in admissions could

push services over the edge.

“It is pretty spectacularly bad now, it

will get worse — and if the new variant

becomes a thing in terms of numbers

and translates into hospital admissions

we are going to be in a very, very diffi-

cult position,” she said.

“We still want patients to come but

we do have to help people to

understand that really at the moment

the service is so stretched that an extra

push could be very very difficult.”

Lights, camera, action Crowds gather to watch a street entertainer in Covent

News Coronavirus

Javid urged to crack down on the

market to protect passengers. “The

government must take steps to properly

regulate the marketplace and imple-

ment the Competition and Markets

Authority recommendations so that

passengers can have confidence that

they’re booking with a provider they

can trust,” Rory Boland, editor of

Which? Travel, said.

Paul Charles, chief executive of the

travel consultancy The PC Agency,

said: “The government promised a

clampdown on the Wild West tactics by

test providers. Yet little seems to have

been done and promises have been

broken.”

The DHSC said it was working with

the UK Health Security Agency to

monitor the government’s list of ap-

proved providers.

The Competition and Markets

Authority (CMA) wrote last week to 25

private travel testing firms warning

them to review their terms and condi-

tions and general practices or risk

enforcement action. It is also formally

investigating Expert Medicals and

Dante Labs over their conduct.

Javid instructed the CMA to invest-

igate PCR testing firms’ practices on

August 6 amid concerns about the

prices being charged, the quality of ser-

vice passengers received and their

rights when things go wrong. In Sep-

tember it published its findings and rec-

ommendations for the government,

which included “significantly improv-

ing the basic standards to qualify for

inclusion and remaining on” the gov.uk

list of approved providers. Passengers

are only permitted to book travel from

companies on the list.

The CMA also wrote to all testing

companies, warning them against

breaking consumer law and said that

they must not advertise cheap PCR

tests that were available only in small

quantities or not at all. They were also

told that prices listed on the govern-

ment website had to be inclusive of any

additional charges. Andrea Coscelli,

chief executive of the CMA, said: “We

recently provided recommendations to

government on changes to better pro-

tect consumers in this market and we

hope that... these will be implemented

as quickly as possible.”

Balpa, the pilots’ trade union, has

written to ministers urging them to

fund PCR testing for passengers

instead of leaving it to “cowboy” private

testing outfits.

Karen Dee, the chief executive of the

Airport Operators Association, said the

reintroduction of pre-departure tests

was a “devastating blow” for aviation

and tourism “just as airports were hop-

ing for a small uplift over Christmas”.

The national picture

How many people have Covid-19?

There were 43,992 new cases reported

yesterday, bringing the total so far to

10,464,389 or 156.7 for every 1,000 people

Daily

cases

5.4% increase from seven days ago

(based on seven-day moving average)

How many are in hospital?

There are 7, 3 7 3 patients in hospital being

treated. 895 patients are on ventilators.

An additional 812 patients have been

admitted, down 0.8 per cent in the seven

days to November 30 when this data

was last updated

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct

0

20,00 0

40,00 0

60,00 0

Seven-day

average

National

R number

1.0 to 1.

Hospital admissions

0

2,

4,

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct

Seven-day

average

How many have died?

Yesterday, there were 54 deaths reported,

bringing the total number of deaths in the

past seven days to 830. The rolling

average number of daily deaths is 118.6,

down from 121.1 a day a week ago

Deaths

0

500

1,

1,

Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct

Seven-day

average

How does 2021 compare?

There were 12,103 deaths from all causes

recorded in England and Wales in the week

to November 19, of which the coronavirus

accounted for 7. 9 per cent. The number of

weekly deaths was 1,753 higher than the

five-year average for the same time of year

2020/

0

10,

5,

20,

15,

Apr Jul Oct Jan Apr Jul Oct

Five-year

average

Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor
Ben Clatworthy
Transport Correspondent

Doctors fear

Neil Johnston

Next virus may be more lethal, vaccine inventor warns

through and then find that the enor-

mous economic losses we have sus-

tained mean that there is still no fund-

ing for pandemic preparedness. The

advances we have made, and the

knowledge we have gained, must

not be lost.”

She is credited with having

saved millions of lives through

her role in designing the cor-

onavirus vaccine, now in use

in more than 170 countries.

She has been making and

testing vaccines for more

than ten years, mainly

using antigens from

malaria and

influenza, and initi-

ated the SARS-

CoV-2 vaccine

project in early

2020 when Covid-

19 first emerged in

China. She said that even if vaccines of-

fered reduced protection against the

new Omicron variant this would “not

necessarily mean reduced protec-

tion against severe disease and

death” but added: “Until we

know more, we should be cau-

tious, and take steps to slow

down the spread of this new

variant.”

Blair told The World This

Weekend on BBC Radio 4

that the international com-

munity should work to-

gether to agree a set of

travel standards and

restrictions and to

organise mass vacci-

nation in all coun-

tries, describing it as “the only route

out”.

He said: “If you’ve got large popula-

tions that are unvaccinated, it’s likely to

mutate faster and further. The failure to

organise mass vaccination globally has

been a huge problem right throughout

this crisis. So I think even at this stage

it’s possible to change course but we

need to have it organised and so now it’s

not just going to be about the supply of

vaccines.

“I think over the coming weeks and

months we’ll have a large supply of vac-

cine flowing even to Africa, but we will

have to organise the distribution, the

logistics and absolutely vitally we’ve

got to organise global genomic sequen-

cing so that we know what’s happening

in countries.”

Gilbert’s lecture will be broadcast on

BBC1 tonight at 10.35pm. It will also be

available on iPlayer.

Kat Lay Health Editor

Dame Sarah

Gilbert advised

great caution