UK watchdog says quarantine hotels cost taxpayers about half of $987 million

(Reuters) – Quarantine hotel rooms for people travelling to the UK between April 2021 and March 2022 cost 757 million pounds ($987.73 million), with taxpayers footing about half the bill, the National Audit Office said on Thursday.

The Department of Health and Social Care had launched Managed Quarantine Service (MQS) on Feb. 15, 2021, and handled 214,000 arrivals between April and December 2021 from red list nations, the report said, adding that travellers were required to isolate for 11 nights in a quarantine hotel provided by the service.

The MQS was part of steps introduced when Britain ramped up border controls to stop new variants of the coronavirus from entering the country. Arrivals into England from 33 “red list” countries, including Brazil and South Africa, were required to spend 10 days quarantined in a hotel room at a cost of 1,750 pounds.

“Although individual departments have been monitoring their own spending on implementing cross-border travel measures in response to COVID-19, government has not routinely tracked the total cost across government despite spending at least 486 million pounds,” the National Audit Office said in a statement.

($1 = 0.7652 pounds)

(Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)