Professor Mark Ferguson:

I thank the Senator very much. In answer to his question, yes, I do believe rapid testing will be very important in instilling confidence in people who may wish to go to hotels, restaurants and so on. It may very well be the case that the owners of hotels or restaurants will do this voluntarily. Speaking personally, I would feel a lot more confident about going to a hotel or restaurant if I knew that everyone there had been rapidly tested or tested previously. It is not perfect. There will be some mistakes but it is an awful lot better than doing nothing. It is important in restoring confidence. I am not sure I would make it mandatory but there is a role there for business owners.

In terms of mandatory hotel quarantine, this situation will become really interesting as travel begins to open up. It is really important that we do these pilots soon and quickly. The report talked about moving at pace. If we start with the essential workers, we can find out what compliance is like, what the IT systems are like and how easy it is to do. We would then be in a very good position to think about whether this could be rolled out more widely and whether we could potentially dispense with mandatory quarantine, as the Senator mentioned. Variants are going to become very important. They come from other countries but also develop in our own country. They generate spontaneously. Therefore, widespread testing both of visitors and the indigenous population is important to keep a handle on those variants.