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Denmark residents again required to quarantine on UK entry

The United Kingdom has removed Denmark from its ‘travel corridor’ list of countries for which quarantine requirements are not applied.

Published: 28 September 2020 15:59 CEST

Denmark residents again required to quarantine on UK entry

People arriving at Heathrow Airport. Photo: Henry Nicholls/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix

The change took effect on Saturday September 26th and means that residents of Denmark who travel to England are now required to quarantine for 14 days on arrival.

This means that, after arriving in England, you must travel directly to the place you are staying and not leave until 14 days have passed. The UK terms this form of quarantine self-isolation. Further details of how to isolate can be found on the UK government website.

Although the UK’s coronavirus quarantine rules refer specifically to travel to England, the same rules currently apply in each of the other UK nations. Separate information can be found on the national government websites for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The return of quarantine for Danish arrivals in the UK is not the only current obstacle to travel between the two countries. Denmark’s foreign ministry last week updated its Covid-19 travel guidelines and is now warning against all non-essential travel to the UK.

READ ALSO: Denmark advises against all non-essential travel to UK and Ireland

Denmark has 127.8 cumulative cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 residents for the last 14 days according to figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the EU agency monitoring the data.

Decisions on whether or not to exempt a country from quarantine rest on an “estimate of the proportion of the population that is currently infectious in each country, virus incidence rates, trends in incidence and deaths, transmission status and international epidemic intelligence as well as information on a country’s testing capacity and an assessment of the quality of the data available,” according to the UK government website.

The UK did not have international travel restrictions during the early phase of the pandemic, but on June 8th introduced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all international arrivals.

From July 10th these were lifted for arrivals from a list of 'exempt' countries which included Denmark.

The Nordic nation was removed from this list on September 26th.

READ ALSO: Passengers warned forms still needed for travelling to the UK from Denmark

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IN NUMBERS: Has the Omicron Covid-19 wave peaked in Denmark?

Graffiti in the Copenhagen hippy enclave of Christiania complaining of Omicron's impact on Christmas. Photo: Philip Davali/Scanpix

How many cases, hospitalisations and deaths are there in Denmark?

Denmark registered 12,588 new cases in the 24 hours leading up to 2pm on Saturday, down from the 18,261 registered on in the day leading up to Friday at 2pm, which was itself a decline from the record 28,283 cases recorded on Wednesday.

The cases were identified by a total of 174,517 PCR tests, bringing the positive percentage to 7.21 percent, down from the sky high rates of close to 12 percent seen in the first few days of January.

The number of cases over the past seven days is lower than the week before in almost every municipality in Denmark, with only Vallensbæk, Aarhus, Holseterbro, Skanderborg, Hjørring, Vordingborg, Ringkøbing, Kolding, Assens, Horsens, Thisted, and Langeland reporting rises.

Hospitalisations have also started to fall, with some 730 patients being treated for Covid-10 on Saturday, down from 755 on Friday. On Tuesday, 794 were being treated for Covid-19 in Danish hospitals, the highest number since the peak of the 2020-21 winter wave.

The only marker which has not yet started to fall is the number of deaths, which tends to trail infections and hospitalisations.

In the 24 hours leading up to 2pm on Saturday, Denmark registered 28 deaths with Covid-19, the highest daily number recorded since 20 January 2021, when 29 people died with Covid-19 (although Denmark’s deadliest day was the 19 January 2021, when 39 people died).

How does Denmark compare to other countries in Europe?

Over the last seven days, Denmark has had the highest Covid-19 case rate of any country in Europe bar Ireland. The number of new infections in the country has climbed steadily since the start of December, apart from a brief fall over Christmas.

So does this mean the omicron wave has peaked?

Maybe, although experts are not sure.

“Of course, you can hope for that, but I’m not sure that is the case,” said Christian Wejse, head of the Department for Infectious Diseases at Aarhus University Hospital. “I think it is too early to conclude that the epidemic has peaked.”

He said that patients with the Omicron variant were being discharged more rapidly on average than had been the case with those who had the more dangerous Delta variant.

“Many admissions are relatively short-lived, thankfully. This is because many do not become that il, and are largely hospitalized because they are suffering with something else. And if they are stable and do not need oxygen, then they are quickly discharged again.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a visit to an event held by the Social Liberal party that the latest numbers made her even more optimistic about the coming month.

“We have lower infection numbers and the number of hospitalisations is also plateauing,” she said. “I think we’re going to get through this winter pretty well, even if it will be a difficult time for a lot of people, and we are beginning to see the spring ahead of us, so I’m actually very optimistic.”

She said that she had been encouraged by the fact that Omicron was a “visibly less dangerous variant if it is not allowed to explode.”

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