Additional £1200 bill if quarantine hotel guests test positive

Travellers in quarantine hotels face an additional £1200 bill if they test positive for coronavirus, the UK Government has revealed.

This is on top of the £1750 fee for entering the programme and will apply to guests required to extend their stay beyond the initial 11 nights.

Information about the £152 daily cost of longer stays was only published on the Government’s website on Monday, after some guests had already checked in.

From 4am on Monday, travellers arriving in England must quarantine in a hotel if they have been in a country at high risk of coronavirus variants in the previous ten days.

However, Scotland is extending the requirement to cover arrivals from any country unless they have travelled from the Common Travel Area (CTA), which includes the UK and Ireland.

Guests are allowed to leave after 11 nights if they receive negative results from tests taken on day two and day eight of their isolation.

A positive result from the first test will extend a traveller’s stay by two nights at a cost of £304.

If the second test returns a positive reading, the guest must remain in their room for an additional eight nights and pay £1216.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked at Monday’s Downing Street press conference what will happen if a traveller cannot afford the extra fee.

He replied: “It is currently illegal to travel abroad for holidays anyway.

“We would expect people who are coming in from one of these red list countries to be able to cover their costs.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has expressed concern about gaps in the current system for international arrivals, telling a coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh on Monday: “It would be better if we had that four nations approach, or at least a three nations approach where the border of the island that Scotland, England and Wales share, had the same provisions in place.”