Britain will on Friday consider easing England’s COVID-19 rules for international travel after the travel industry complained that a myriad of onerous rules and bureaucratic procedure were hobbling airlines, holiday and tourism companies.
In a bid to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Britain features a maze of various rules requiring expensive private testing and quarantine and a so-called traffic signal system which ranks destinations as green, amber and red.
“The COVID sub-committee of cabinet that decides this stuff are going to be considering that probably later today,” Agriculture Secretary George Eustice told Sky News.
The British travel industry has called on the govt to ease travel restrictions, force companies to supply cheaper testing and permit those that are double vaccinated more freedom.
Tourists and ministers have complained about the worth travellers are being charged for obligatory private COVID-19 tests – which are listed as costing around 50 pounds but which may cost up to 399 pounds, consistent with current listings.
Ministers will cut the amount of “red list” countries – currently 62 – by removing the “amber list” and people who are double vaccinated will not need to buy costly polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, the days newspaper reported.
For those coming back from red-list countries, quarantine hotels are expected to stay in situ , the newspaper said.