RETURN OF GLOBAL TRAVEL WILL BE PATCHY, HEATHROW CHIEF SAYS
▶ Covid-19 concerns will affect whether UK opens its borders to overseas tourists this summer
People who plan to visit Britain should not expect all border restrictions to be lifted by the summer, Heathrow Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye said.
His remarks to an aviation forum suggest the travel industry is not confident that the UK will open up to all international tourists this summer.
Mr Holland-Kaye said he expected vaccination rates in other countries to remain a concern for the UK government.
“The nature of international travel is that you’ve got to think of both ends of the route,” he said.
“Unless the UK government is confident about vaccination levels, or the risk of importing Covid-19 from overseas, then they’re not going to open their borders with other countries.
“That’s why, over the summer, we’re going to see a patchy opening up of international travel, which I hope will progressively improve.”
The government plans to introduce a new traffic light system on May 17 that will set testing and quarantine rules for people who return to England from overseas.
Countries in the EU want to introduce a Covid-19 passport initiative this summer. The plan will allow people vaccinated against Covid-19, those who recovered from the disease and tourists who test negative for infection more freedom to travel within the bloc.
The European Parliament is expected to discuss the plan this month.
Mr Holland-Kaye urged the UK government not to be overly cautious about opening the country up to the world.
“We know that international travel is a vector for carrying this virus around the world so we do need to be responsible, but until we get people flying again we won’t have a business,” he said.
“There’s a difficult balance we all have to make in our work with the government to make sure we’re not pushing people to go too far and too fast.
“But equally, we’re not encouraging them to be too cautious because the government has to balance the economic needs with the health issues, and we’re coming close to a tipping point for that.”
The government is under pressure to ease restrictions faster after the latest data from the Office for National Statistics showed that nearly one in four registered Covid-19 deaths in the UK were people who tested positive but did not die from the disease.
Separate records show that the daily coronavirus death toll has not exceeded 28 fatalities since the start of the month, despite government tallies suggesting the rate was higher.
This is because daily updates could be affected by delayed reporting from local health authorities.
Meanwhile, inoculation campaigns in the UK could receive a boost in the coming months as authorities consider mixing vaccines.
That could speed up immunisation drives and reduce the amount of time people would be required to wait between doses because overall supply would be higher.
A University of Oxford trial is assessing whether combining vaccines gives people broader immunity that lasts longer than if they receive only one type of shot. Adults over 50 who have had their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines have been invited to take part in the trial.
They could be given a second shot of the same vaccine they received before, or a shot of the Moderna or Novavax vaccines.
Prof Matthew Snape of the Oxford Vaccine Group said combining vaccines could be a way to speed up mass inoculation campaigns around the world.
He said the UK’s vaccination drive could be adapted “within the next few months” if the study was successful.
Health authorities are keen to improve ways to tackle the pandemic after a cluster of cases of the South African Covid-19 variant were identified in south London this week. Authorities began a surge testing campaign in response.
Prof Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London said the variant could reverse the progress made in recent months.
The UK started to ease restrictions this week but that could now be reversed, he said.
“I think we’re all just hoping that the staged reduction in lockdown is going to be OK,” he said.
“It is being done reasonably cautiously, but this is not good news.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the country should remain cautious as restrictions were eased, because those measures were responsible for driving cases down.
“People don’t, I think, appreciate that it’s the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and in the figures that we’re seeing,” he said.
One in four registered Covid-19 deaths in the UK were people who tested positive but did not die from the disease