South Africa Covid quarantine: 'We just feel like we've been abandoned'

Alex Zachary and his wife Candice took their three-month-old daughter to South Africa so she could meet Candice's parents, who are in poor health

British citizens and residents arriving back in the UK from countries on the Covid-19 red list currently have to quarantine for 10 days. What is it like for those in that position and others trying to make their way home?

Alex Zachary uses many prison analogies when describing his current situation.

He, his wife and their three-month-old daughter are currently in quarantine at a hotel in Milton Keynes having returned from South Africa at the end of last week.

Their room is "the cell", the guests are "inmates" and a small area outside in which they can walk around is "the exercise yard".

"It absolutely is [like a prison]," says Mr Zachary, a solicitor from London. "There's also the camaraderie that has grown between the inmates, a sense of togetherness."

His family's current confinement, he says, is far less stressful than the struggle involved in getting back to the UK.

The family was in South Africa when the initial ban on flights because of the Omicron variant was introduced. He contacted British Airways (BA) but, he says, after being kept on hold for 45 minutes, he was then told to try back in "a few days".

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After a failed to attempt to fly via Mauritius, Mr Zachary then spent the next four days trying to reorganise the flights with BA because his wife Candice, and their daughter, were initially planning to return to the UK a fortnight after him.

He claims BA made errors in their booking on four occasions before their flight back was arranged for 3 December. The booking change fee was £500.

He then turned his attention to sorting accommodation in the UK via CTM, the firm contracted by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) to manage the compulsory hotel quarantine.

Mr Zachary says he struggled to get hotel accommodation. He says emails went unanswered and told how he spent hours refreshing the CTM booking portal only to find apparently available rooms had already been sold.

Eventually, he managed to book a room at a hotel in Milton Keynes, 60 miles from their home in London.

When they arrived in the UK, he says, their baby's car seat had been lost and, when they arrived at the hotel in Milton Keynes, the family room they had been expecting turned out to be a standard room with no cot.

After refusing to enter the room, Mr Zachary says, the hotel eventually offered them a family room with a cot. The 10-night stay will cost him £4,000.

Mr Zachary says he feels the government has "really just abandoned people".

"I don't think I have ever been more stressed than I was that week. It was like snakes and ladders, you would move forward with something and then slip back to square one.

"You just couldn't switch off or turn your brain off so you couldn't sleep. It was just utterly miserable."

Mr Zachary says the hotel he found in Milton Keynes did not initially provide him with the family room arranged or a cot for his baby

The BBC put Mr Zachary's complaints about the booking issues, unanswered emails and the problem with the room to CTM.

A spokesman for the company said: "The Hotel Quarantine booking portal has been operational since February 2021 and has successfully processed more than 1.5 million transactions on behalf of travellers during that time.

"CTM is working closely with the 11 countries recently added to the red list where direct flights to the UK were initially banned. Frequent cancellations and flight arrival time changes by airlines and the return of direct flights are also resulting in a high number of change requests from travellers returning to the UK earlier than their initial bookings.

"Since the recent changes to the red list implemented to slow the spread of the new Omicron variant, over 4,800 travellers have successfully booked managed quarantine.

"CTM is working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and all relevant parties in the UK Managed Quarantine programme to ensure transfers, accommodation, testing and security are increased in line with capacity as quickly as possible.

"CTM has assisted the DHSC in doubling hotel capacity from Monday this week since the re-introduction of the red list on 28 November. Further increases in availability are being made on a daily basis.."

After the BBC contacted BA about Mr Zachary's case, the firm offered to refund him the £500 booking change fee.

A spokesman for the company, which has set up a priority local line for customers in South Africa, said: "As a result of the UK government placing South Africa on to the red list, our teams worked hard to support our customers.

"We are sorry that some customers have experienced difficulty reaching our teams but we set up a dedicated priority local phone line in South Africa to support our customers."

A spokesperson for the DHSC said: "We are rapidly expanding our hotel capacity following our immediate and precautionary action against the omicron variant.

"We have doubled the number of hotel rooms available from Monday and will continue to increase availability on a daily basis."

'I've never been so stressed'

Jeannine Boshoff says the stress of getting back to the UK was "horrendous"

Social worker Jeannine Boshoff has lived in Norwich for the past four years.

Originally from South Africa, she travelled back to the country on 20 November to see family and planned to return to the UK on 27 November.

But the day before she was meant to fly back to the UK, South Africa was placed on the UK's red list of countries and her flight was cancelled.

Since then she has struggled both to get a new flight and to get a hotel room booked for 10 nights to spend in quarantine.

Eventually, Ms Boshoff thought she had achieved the flight and hotel booking only for Virgin Atlantic to alter her flight to the day before which, she says, has left her in limbo because she cannot check in to hotel until the following day.

Her flight would arrive on 11 December but her hotel - the Radisson Blu at Heathrow - is booked from 12 December.

"I've never been so stressed - I am anxious and I cannot sleep any more because I am thinking 'what do I do?'.

"The stress that this has caused I just can't explain it - it is just horrendous.

"I've got work to get back to and friends in England to see this Christmas. I am upset, it feels like I can't really celebrate Christmas. It is very upsetting and emotional for me. I won't get out of quarantine until 24 December, the whole experience [of Christmas] is gone for me."

Virgin Atlantic said it had to change flight times to tie in the hotel quarantine scheme

Most of her £2,200 in savings - much of which was left to her by her late father - has been spent on rearranging her travel, booking the hotel for quarantining in and the extra expense of staying in South Africa.

A spokesman for Virgin Atlantic said: "Following the reinstatement of South Africa on the UK government's 'red list', we've been actively reviewing our flying schedule and reduced the service frequency between Johannesburg and London Heathrow to three times per week, to be compliant with these regulations and because of reduced demand.

"We also had to change the timing of our flights to arrive in the opening hours of Heathrow's designated red list Terminal 4, where all arrivals disembark before going into managed hotel quarantine for 10 days.

"We understand that the retiming of these flights may result in changes to managed hotel quarantine bookings and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

"If customers require a change to their hotel booking, we recommend they contact CTM, the agent which administrates hotel quarantine on behalf of the UK Government, to discuss their options. We also offer a flexible policy for South Africa customers which enables them to rebook on to a different flight free of charge so that their UK arrival coincides with improved hotel quarantine capacity."

'I'm so disappointed that we are being treated in this way'

Lauren Rochat-Greene visited South Africa to see her elderly parents for the first time in two years

Lauren Rochat-Greene, a social worker from Aylesbury, is currently spending quarantine alone at a Gatwick hotel.

A single mother, her 20-year-old son is at home looking after their pets.

"Both of my parents turned 80 this year and I have been waiting for South Africa to be off any sort of list before going out there to see them."

She had always planned to return home to the UK via Geneva in Switzerland. But because she was coming to the UK from Switzerland, she did not realise she would have to quarantine for 10 days and so did not book a hotel.

But when she landed in Geneva, she says the Swiss authorities detained her and initially tried to return her to South Africa.

"I said I am a British citizen and I want to go home," she says.

She claims she contacted CTM while in Geneva to try to book a hotel for quarantine.

Lauren Rochat-Greene has bought a puzzle which she hopes will keep her occupied in quarantine

"I was told I needed to get back to the UK as I am a British national but they said there were no hotel rooms available."

When faced with filling in the arrival form, she realised there was no option not to quarantine in a hotel. She says she was told by her airline that because she was a social worker she would qualify as a government worker which would exempt her from having to quarantine in a hotel and could quarantine at home for 10 days instead.

With a fresh negative PCR test, she was allowed to board the plane in Geneva but was stopped by UK Border Agency staff at Luton who told her she was not exempt and issued her with a notice to issue a fixed penalty notice of up to £10,000.

Within hours of her arrival, a hotel was found and she booked herself in.

"I'm so disappointed that we are being treated in this way. I am double jabbed and have had the booster and had two negative PCR tests. I am just shaking my head. I am £3,700 poorer as a result of this."

Asked how she was staying compos mentis alone in a hotel room for 10 days, she said: "I am going to order a puzzle and some wine. But I might be going out of my mind a little bit by the weekend."

The UK Border Force was asked for comment about the penalty notice issued to Ms Rochat-Greene.

A Government spokesperson said: "Travel continues to be different and we encourage everyone to ensure they have the necessary tests and travel documents before travelling.

"Airlines are responsible for checking passengers have proof of a negative pre-departure test and also have a completed passenger locator forms.

"Airlines are also responsible for ensuring that passengers who declare they have been in a red list country in the past 10 days are only conveyed to certain airports with managed quarantine facilities, and that passengers claiming an exemption from managed quarantine have evidence to support this."