Travel news
The UK Government is relaxing the rules for international travel with a simplification of the traffic light system.
From next month, the amber designation will be dropped, leaving just red and green-list destinations.
Fully-vaccinated passengers will no longer need to take a pre-departure test for travelling into England from non-red list countries. And from the end of October, people will be able to replace their day-two PCR test with a lateral flow test.
As P.S. went to press, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had not yet confirmed whether PCR testing for travellers returning to Scotland would be scrapped.
The UK has had 62 countries on its red list for the past few weeks. That means travellers arriving from those countries must spend 11 nights in hotel quarantine upon arrival in the UK and take day two and day eight tests – all at their own expense. Over the summer, these countries included popular tourist destinations such as Turkey and the Philippines.
The Welsh Government was still considering whether to adopt the same rules for international travel as had been announced for England. Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said: “The UK Government’s approach to international travel during the pandemic has been among the most chaotic parts of its response. It’s very hard indeed to follow their thinking in this area.
“We have consistently urged of them a more precautionary approach to defending the borders of the UK against the reimportation into the UK of coronavirus and particularly the importation of new variants that may be occurring elsewhere in the world.”
However, the travel industry claims ministers “missed the boat” by delaying the latest easing of travel rules until after the summer.
Easyjet chief commercial officer Sophie Dekkers said the airline was “surprised and delighted” by the change in policy, but said it was made too late.
She told the Commons’ Transport Select Committee: “In terms of sales over the weekend, they did pick up but not to the extent that we’ve seen in previous announcements because we’ve missed the summer.
“October half-term is probably the only big opportunity for people (to go on holiday) in the near term, so although we saw a good uplift in trading and sales over the weekend, we’ve missed the boat unfortunately with the summer holidays.”
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