Brits scramble to get out of Mexico
THOUSANDS of British holidaymakers in Mexico are scrambling to get home after travel restrictions changed at short notice.
From 4am on Sunday, those returning home from Mexico will have to quarantine in a designated hotel for ten days.
The cost of a flight back to Britain was being sold for between £2,000 and £4,000 yesterday as many tried to beat the deadline.
There are about 5,000 and 6,000 British holidaymakers in Mexico currently. In a further blow, the cost of hotel quarantine will increase from August 12, with the price for single adult travellers rising from £1,750 to £2,285 and a second adult paying £1,430 – more than double the current rate of £650.
One couple have been forced to cut their honeymoon from two weeks to two days.
Student Joe Coward, 29, said: ‘We feel... incredibly sad and frustrated that the time that should’ve been spent enjoying being newlyweds has been ruined.’ British Airways said its teams had been ‘working through the night to arrange as many additional seats out of Mexico as possible to help get Britons home’. But there is unlikely to be enough seats for all those desperate to return as is the case of trust officer Claudia Rattray.
Mrs Rattray, 44, told of ‘shock and devastation’ after landing in Mexico to discover the country had been placed on the red list while she was flying. She and her daughters Ivanna, 15, and Summer, 14, had travelled from their home in Jersey in order to visit family.
She said: ‘My husband spoke to British Airways to see if we were able to get flights for tonight or tomorrow... and there’s no seats available, nothing.’
NHS worker Ayo Faley, 24, also only discovered she had just three days left to return home to avoid quarantine after landing in Cancun yesterday. She said she was ‘absolutely distraught’ but plans to complete her holiday. She asked: ‘How are [the Government] planning to help individuals who have found themselves in a situation like this?’
Mexico is in the grip of a third wave of Covid and on Wednesday another 611 deaths were reported – taking the total number of deaths due to the virus to 242,547.