No formal contracts have been awarded to hotels by the government to quarantine arrivals from countries on the “red list”, Downing Street admitted on Monday.
The new policy forcing arrivals to quarantine in government-approved hotels from destinations including Portugal, South Africa and parts of South America comes into force in just one week’s time.
But Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said: “Last week the Department of Health [and Social Care] issued a commercial specification to hotels near ports and airports.
“This asked for proposals on how they could deliver managed quarantine facilities. No formal contracts have been awarded yet.”
The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that government officials had been working to book 28,000 hotel rooms.
But the boss of Best Western said hotel chains were being “kept in the dark” over the government’s plans.
Under the new rule, which was announced on January 27 but will not be in force until February 15, arrivals will have to quarantine for 10-days in government run hotels near to airports.
Ministers have said the move is necessary to prevent the importing of new strains of coronavirus such as the South Africa variant.
But critics have accused the prime minister of being too slow to act and for not going far enough.
Labour has attacked the decision to apply mandatory hotel quarantine only to arrivals from a limited number of countries as “half-baked”, saying it leaves “gaping holes” at the border.
Papers published on Friday reveal the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) warned last month that “geographically targeted” travel bans “cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants”.
Sage also suggested “digital methods” of monitoring compliance with self-isolation could be an alternative to quarantine hotels.
Speaking on Monday, Johnson suggested tougher border controls could be come in the future.
“They are most effective, border controls, when you’ve got the rate of infection down in your country,” he told reporters.
“And at the moment we’ve greatly reduced the rate of infection from the peak, where it was a few weeks ago, but it’s still extremely high.
“For border controls really to make that final difference so you can isolate new variants as they come in, you need to have infections really much lower so you can track them as they spread.
“Don’t forget, we in the UK are capable of seeing variants arise here, just in the UK, the Kent variant arose here, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be relying very much on border controls as we get the rates of infection down overall.”
Some countries have long had mandatory quarantine policies in place. Australia confirmed its first Covid case on January 25 and its borders were closed to non-residents on March 20. From March 27 people returning home to Australia had to quarantine for two weeks in government run hotels.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, last week rejected the comparison between the UK and Australia.
He told MPs: “People say: ‘Why don’t we just close down and then we’ll be safe?’ But, of course, we wouldn’t be safe, because we are an island nation, unlike Australia or something which is an entire continent.”