Heathrow Airport trials could spare Britons from quarantine after holidays if ministers back scheme

Heathrow is trialling twenty-second Covid tests in a bid to replace the current quarantine system and ‘unlock travel’.

The airport is working with Oxford and Manchester universities on three cutting-edge tests to screen people on arrival and departure, it was reported last night.

Heathrow believes the scheme could allow travel to resume to and from the Government’s ‘red list’ countries. 

Currently, passengers reaching the UK from these places have to quarantine for 14 days.

The results are to be submitted to Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, to persuade them to replace quarantine with a comprehensive testing regime that could kickstart international travel and trade. 

At least 30 other countries have already introduced border testing for Covid-19. 

The British Government has been accused of allowing trade competitors such as Germany and France to steal a march by introducing Covid screening for arrivals.

Ministers say testing would not work because of the risk of false negative results. 

Heathrow has already built a testing centre where passengers would pay £150 for a PCR test like those used by the NHS. 

A follow-up test five or eight days later would release people from quarantine early if negative.

However, the cost and the delay in getting results – up to 48 hours – could hamper a wider roll-out.

The airport is therefore working with Oxford and Manchester to trial three new faster tests that could cost a fifth of the price.

One is a throat swab which produces results in 30 minutes, a second is a saliva-based test similar in style to a pregnancy test which comes back in ten minutes.

And the third is a holographic microscope test pioneered for ebola which can produce results in as little as 20 seconds.

Some 250 Heathrow workers participated in the trial under which they took the tests which are likely to cost as little as £30, alongside a PCR test to evaluate accuracy. 

The results are now being evaluated by the universities before being passed to the Government.

John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s chief executive, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘Testing is the lifeline that the UK’s aviation sector needs to get back on its feet.

‘We’ve put some of the most cutting-edge rapid testing technologies into action at Heathrow to see which offers the best solution.

‘If we can find a test that is accurate, gets a result within a matter of minutes, is cost-effective and gets the Government green light, we could have the potential to introduce wide-scale testing.’

Airlines are pushing for some sort of testing regime to replace quarantine, which has proved disastrous for the travel industry.

Yesterday, Gatwick Airport said demand for air travel might not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025, after the airport announced a 61.3 per cent fall in revenue.