Middle MHK Bill Shimmins has demanded that a quarantine facility be established to aid Manx citizens' return to the island.

Currently, anyone outside the border is not permitted to return to the island, with the exception of certain key workers.

Mr Shimmins told Tynwald that most countries have set up quarantine centres for returning residents while the island has shut its doors to residents and told them they must wait.

He said that ’it is far from heroic to abandon our own people’.

Mr Shimmins received support from fellow MHKs and MLCs in questioning the government’s position on refusing to allow residents to return.

Tynwald is having its fourth sitting this month as the government responds to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to his constituency colleague, Chief Minister Howard Quayle that ’our medics gave us the advice that unless we closed our borders, people would die’.

He added: ’We are living in a national emergency, not a joyride on some whim, we have done this with the advice of our medics.’

Mr Quayle said 88 Manx residents are overseas, with 17 being in the British Isles and that the Cabinet Office is in contact with the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and that residents would be able to return to the UK as part of the British government’s flights to return citizens to the UK.

The Chief Minister said that the government would continue to follow clinical advice and challenged members to vote against that advice.

There will be a fuller report from Tynwald in this week’s Manx Independent, available in shops and online from Thursday.