‘Surrey’ coronavirus patient who returned from Milan had not visited towns at heart of quarantine lockdown: Fears even more holidaymakers will bring back virus as passengers from Italy arrive at Heathrow without any health checks
One of England’s coronavirus patients managed to fly into the UK from Milan without going through any health checks, it is believed.
Yesterday’s confirmed case was believed to be in a Surrey man who had flown home without visiting any of the towns at the centre of Italy’s quarantine zone.
Flights from the Italian city, which is the closest airport to the locked-down area of northern Italy, land in the UK dozens of times a day.
But a correspondent for ITV’s Good Morning Britain shared a video of him walking through Heathrow arrivals without going through any special checks, despite flying in from Milan.
More than 650 people have now been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Italy, with almost all of the cases declared since last weekend.
There are now fears that many more people will have become infected with the virus while on half-term trips to the Alps and brought it in through British airports.
A Good Morning Britain correspondent shared video of himself and fellow passengers from Milan, the closest airport to Italy’s coronavirus crisis, passing through Heathrow without any health checks
In a tweet posted yesterday, GMB correspondent Nick Dixon said: ‘Just arrived at Heathrow T5 after 4 days in Milan – was fully expecting a thermal temperature check. Nothing. Straight through. #CoronaVirus #COVID’.
He accompanied the comment with a video showing passengers from the same plane as him walking through the arrivals area.
More than 600 COVID-19 cases have been diagnosed in the Milan area in the past week after an outbreak gripped some 11 small provinces close to the city.
And people who caught the virus in Italy have spread it around the world this week, with cases appearing in Macedonia, Denmark, Brazil, Romania, Georgia, Estonia, San Marino, Netherlands, Lithuania, Nigeria, Belarus and New Zealand.
MailOnline has contacted Heathrow Airport and the Department of Health for comment.