Belgium, Luxembourg and Croatia may join Spain on England’s Covid-19 quarantine list

Travellers returning to England from Belgium and Luxembourg could have quarantine restrictions reimposed in the next two days, as ministers grapple to contain any fresh threat from a potential second wave of coronavirus in some European countries.

Related: Testing for Covid-19 on arrival in UK is no 'silver bullet', says minister

Ministers are understood to be closely monitoring spikes in the number of cases in Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as in Croatia, a more popular holiday destination for British tourists.

The Covid-19 rate has almost tripled in Belgium this month, from 5.3 to 15.1 per 100,000 of the population, with the number of cases up from 615 to 1,751, leading to a crackdown on numbers of people allowed to socialise. Luxembourg’s rate of infection is 15 times higher per capita than in the UK.

A 14-day quarantine, similar to those reimposed on tourists returning from Spain last weekend, could be reintroduced later this week for travellers arriving in England from those countries if the trajectory of new cases continues, though it would be up to the devolved administrations to decide whether to follow suit.

The government’s Covid operations committee will meet on Thursday and a review of the air bridge system is due to take place on Friday.

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The reimposition of restrictions would deal a further blow to the government’s “air bridges” scheme to allow UK travellers to go abroad and return without quarantine to countries that had been deemed to have the virus under control.

Government sources pointed to the most recent figures from Spain, where the infection rate per capita is three times higher than the UK, as a vindication of their decision to impose a de facto travel ban on the country by recommending against all but essential travel.

The introduction of further quarantine measures, should it be necessary, would be unwelcome for the travel industry, which has lobbied for the government to shorten the quarantine time with mass testing of returning travellers.

Heathrow’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said the government must find a new way, involving testing, to save the industry and allow people to travel safely.

“We need to find a way of getting ‘red countries’ opened up again. Testing is the only viable way of doing that in the absence of a vaccine,” Holland-Kaye told the Telegraph (paywall).

“A lot of countries which are red-listed have millions of people who don’t have the disease and can’t travel. That’s holding back economic recovery.”

The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, suggested the government was not convinced by testing passengers on arrival.

“The challenge with that, and of course we have examined it, is that it’s not a silver bullet so you can test negative initially and then the virus can incubate and you can spread,” he told LBC radio.

“So we do not get the assurance just from a test as people arrive in the UK. Again, I keep saying through all of this, we are reviewing all of these things because we want to minimise the disruption. We want to ensure people can go on holiday but we are not convinced at the moment that would be sufficient to give that assurance that we’re not spreading the virus.”