The coronavirus pandemic has been worst in areas with major airports and large numbers of travellers passing through them, according to a global report.
The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said the spread of the deadly disease, which has now killed more than 50,000 people in Britain, was ‘highly correlated’ with air travel.
It said the UK was a prime example of where constant flights, both around the country and around the world, had ‘facilitated contagion’.
UK Government officials have throughout the outbreak refused to close Britain’s borders to international travellers, opting instead only to advise people not to travel, which in turn hit airlines so hard they had to stop flights because they were losing money.
Other countries meanwhile, including China and Italy, closed their borders to all international visitors and sent them home or locked them in.
The public called for international travel to stop in the early stages of the outbreak, but officials refused and Government documents have since revealed it was because so many people in the UK already had the virus.
A rule that came into place this week now requires all people travelling into Britain to self-isolate for two weeks, while there has been talk of ‘air bridges’ to popular tourist destinations to allow people to travel freely.
Britain has been one of the worst-hit countries in the world during the pandemic, with 290,000 people officially diagnosed and more than 40,000 confirmed dead.
Only the US has had more cases and deaths, with Brazil and Russia recording more cases but not as many deaths – although Brazil will likely pass the UK within days.
Britain has not banned international flights at any point of the outbreak, instead advising people not to go abroad (Pictured: People passing through Heathrow Airport this week)
The IEP report showed that international travel hubs particularly badly hit by the coronavirus – including Milan, New York and London – had to almost completely stop people moving around in order to get on top their outbreaks
A separate study by researchers at the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh estimated that most of the imported cases of coronavirus in Britain came from Spain, France and Italy, and that only a tiny fraction came from Asian countries, with just 0.08 per cent transmitted by people travelling from China (Study published on Virological.org)
The IEP’s Global Peace Index report said: ‘The flow of air passengers across and within country borders has been a major contributor to the spread of the virus’.
A director at IEP, Serge Stroobants, told the Press Association: ‘The countries most impacted are countries that are really participating in global trade in the globalised world and the interconnected world.
‘These are countries in which you will find a large airport hub, giving the potential to people to travel from one country to the other.
‘That’s why, for example, the region of Milan in Italy, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt, London and New York, those big international hubs created more exchanges and more potential for the virus to grow.’
The UK Government’s policies on air travel during the pandemic have been controversial.
Flights have been unrestricted and international arrivals have only been required to enter a 14-day quarantine since Monday, June 8.
When there was still a small number of coronavirus cases in the UK, there were calls for restrictions on flights from destinations deemed at high risk of the virus.
The Government insisted at the time there was no evidence that closing borders would be an effective measure.
Air travel had to be drastically reduced worldwide to stop the virus from spreading. Experts said international travel had ‘facilitated contagion’
It has since emerged that the reason officials refused to stop international flights into and out of the UK was that millions of people in Britain already had the virus.
Documents that were presented to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in March showed stopping flights would not have protected the UK.
In a paper dated March 22, the day before Britain’s lockdown, scientists said stopping international flights in a bid to stop people bringing the coronavirus to the UK from abroad was ‘not a useful measure’.
There were so many people already infected in Britain that any imported cases would be drops in the ocean, the paper explained.
It said: ‘The initial view from SPI-M is that given the current widescale transmission of COVID-19 within the UK, measures to stop imported cases would have negligible impact. This might change if the UK were to successfully contain the epidemic.’
On the subject of ‘hotspots’ the SPI-M committee suggested that flights from Spain and Iran were probably the highest risk.
Spain because of the sheer number of passengers – there were some 15,000 per day still arriving on weekday flights that week.
And Iran because of the severity of the outbreak there – even though passenger numbers were low, there was a high chance some of them might have the illness.
It said flights from countries like France, Italy and Germany were low-risk because they were going through the same experience as the UK and passenger numbers were already low because of their government and airline restrictions.
Britain did not force flights to stop but told people not to travel abroad. Airlines took it upon themselves to stop most flights when passenger numbers dried up.
As the country moves of lockdown air travel is now starting to return to something resembling normal in the UK.
Gatwick Airport will reopen its north terminal and extend its operating hours from Monday.
The West Sussex airport announced the measures as airlines scale up their flying programmes.
EasyJet, Wizz Air and Ryanair are among the carriers whose passengers will use the north terminal from Monday.
Since April 1, Gatwick has only opened its south terminal and flights have been scheduled between 2pm and 10pm, but this will be extended to between 6am and 10pm.
In 2019, Gatwick served more destinations than any other UK airport and saw 280,700 flights and 46.6 million passengers use the international airport.
However in April this year, the airport had a total of just 305 aircraft movements, data from the Civil Aviation Authority showed.