UK Universities to quarantine Indian students and potentially cover their costs?

Indian students who need to complete their quarantine period in a hotel accommodation when arriving in the UK, a number of UK universities have announced that they will reimburse the 10-day quarantine and testing fees, up to the total value of £1,750, reported SI-UK.

Universities have expressed concerns that the UK government will not be able to manage the influx of up to 50,000 Indian students flying into the UK in autumn, on top of up to 1,000 more a day arriving from other red list countries. Also, this plan will help reduce hardships or prevent students from losing hard-won places, said The Telegraph.

Some universities such as Heriot-Watt and Birmingham even had their hotel accommodation typically used for parents or visitors, while the sector had already established protocols for quarantining international students, Universities UK International (UUKI) director Vivienne Stern told The Telegraph.

Several UK universities are now offering quarantine funding support by way of tuition fee discounts, reimbursement, scholarships and hardship funds. Such financial assistance will help international students from red-list countries to cover any additional costs incurred by travelling to the UK.

Some of the universities who have already announced their plans to cover hotel quarantine costs for students from Red-list countries include:

• University of York
• University of Bristol
• London Metropolitan University
• Cranfield University
• University of Lincoln
• Cardiff University
• Oxford Brookes University
• Regent’s University London
• Brunel University London
• University of Leeds
• Keele University
• Newcastle University
• University of Manchester
• Royal Holloway University of London (quarantine hotel cost up to £1,500)
• Lancaster University (half of the quarantine hotel cost currently up to £875)

Source: SI-UK, The Telegraph