Covid-19 coronavirus: Senior Tories urge Boris Johnson to cut quarantine to five days

A woman wears a face mask in Manchester, England. Photo / AP

Quarantine periods in Britain should be slashed to just five days by using Covid-19 testing that would catch nearly nine in 10 cases, senior Tory MPs say.

The have urged Boris Johnson to adopt the move in a letter ahead of next week's virus task force report to the Prime Minister.

The letter, signed by MPs including Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the influential Tory backbench 1922 Committee, and six former ministers, said the British Government's current proposal for seven days is too long.

It cited evidence from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that said tests on the fifth day of isolation could capture at least 88 per cent of cases.

Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, who is chairing the task force with Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, favours testing on the seventh day releasing those with negative results halfway through the 14-day quarantine.

But the letter from 13 MPs, including former ministers David Davis, Caroline Noakes, Paul Maynard, Tim Loughton, Steve Brine and Crispin Blunt, urges that quarantine should be "as short as possible based on the scientific advice".

They said testing on day five should be a precursor to reducing quarantine even further through pre-departure tests, which would mean arrivals could be released from quarantine after two days in the UK.

The MPs said evidence was also emerging from Canada that 80 per cent of infected passengers could be detected by tests on arrival, significantly more than the hotly disputed 7 per cent figure quoted by UK ministers.