It is hard not to have a soft spot for Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, who comes across as a decent and principled man. He was certainly right about Dominic Cummings, refusing to bow to his attempt to control the Treasury from No 10 and bravely resigning instead.

Yet has he, like many health secretaries before him, been captured by the NHS?

While he started in his role punchily, insisting that we had to learn to live with coronavirus, I was surprised to read that he opposed the relaxing of international travel restrictions.

He reportedly told the Covid O Cabinet committee of senior ministers that removing the requirement to take a PCR test, two days after entering the UK, would limit the Government’s ability to detect future mutant strains.

But when we are already testing more than the rest of Europe, we are not likely to miss out on spotting new variants, are we? In any case, the sheer cost of the travel testing requirements – running to hundreds of pounds for a family of four – had put foreign holidays out of reach for many.

Arguably of far greater concern is the state of the care home sector right now. Forced to close to new admissions for 28 days if they find two or more positive cases (unlike hospitals which remain open despite nearly half of new “Covid” patients being admitted for other reasons), and facing crippling staff shortages, the care industry is described as “on the brink of collapse”.

If facilities are not permitted to accept patients discharged from hospital — even when they test negative and are barrier-nursed in self-isolation for two weeks — then bed blocking will continue and ultimately more nursing and residential homes could go bust.

Surely this issue is more of a threat to the NHS – and the people it serves – than travel restrictions.