Why the government is concerned about a second wave

As the government struggled on Saturday with the question of whether to impose a quarantine on those returning from Spain, there was a hold-up: a key minister was unavailable. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was on a holiday flight to Spain and hadn’t landed yet.

When Shapps eventually made it on to the Zoom call from his holiday villa, one person who sat in on the meeting was surprised by the speed at which the quarantine decision was made. After being stung by accusations that the government moved too slowly in its initial handling of the pandemic, Boris Johnson now wants to show it is moving quickly. The Spanish quarantine, which is more draconian than the approaches taken by France or Germany, shows the Prime Minister is prepared to enforce heavy restrictions with little warning, even if this means a backlash from business leaders and his own MPs.

With a spike in recorded infections in European countries such as Belgium and France, Johnson this week warned that ‘the signs of a second wave of the pandemic’ are there. But it’s not the prospect of having to extend the travel quarantine to other tourist hotspots that is giving the government great cause for concern — it’s the fear that the second wave could soon hit these shores.

Throughout the Covid crisis the government has been observing how other countries have dealt with the pandemic, looking for clues about what to do and what not. The spike in infections in southern states of the US was taken as a warning about opening up too quickly. But now that Germany, which adopted a more cautious approach about lifting lockdown and leads the way in testing, has also reported an uptick, some worry that any substantial easing risks a spike.