London Feb 11 (BNA): Vaccinated travelers can enter Britain without any coronavirus tests from Friday, after the government scrapped one of the final restrictions imposed over the past two years in response to COVID-19, according to the Associated Press (AP) reported. .
British residents and visitors who have had at least two doses of the approved coronavirus vaccine now only need to fill out a passenger locator form before traveling to the UK Unvaccinated people are still required to get tests before and after arrival but they no longer need to be isolated until they get on a negative result.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the UK “now has one of the freest-flowing borders in the world – and it sends a clear message that we are open for business”.
Airlines and other travel companies have welcomed the change as a lifeline after two years of severely restricted travel. Andrew Flintham, managing director of travel group Tui UK, said there was a “huge pent-up demand for international travel” and people were rushing to book holidays for the February school break and Easter break in April.
Gatwick Airport, London’s second-busiest airport, said next month it plans to reopen its second of its two terminals, closed since June 2020.
British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle urged other countries to follow Britain’s “pragmatic approach”.
But some scholars worry that the government is moving too fast. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government lifted most local rules last month. Face masks are no longer mandatory in most enclosed spaces in England, vaccination passports to enter nightclubs and large-scale events have been abolished, as has been the official advice to work from home. Other parts of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have also lifted most restrictions.
Johnson announced this week that he hopes to lift the final restriction – mandatory self-isolation for people who test positive – by the end of February as part of a plan for long-term living with COVID-19. Officials said the government plans to shift from legal restrictions to advisory measures and treat the coronavirus like the flu as it becomes a pandemic in the country.
Scientists expressed surprise at Johnson’s announcement. This is “more of a political kind than a scientific statement,” said Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King’s College London.
“There are some rationales for this and that other countries are doing similar things, but it is clearly a race for the government to say ‘Britain is first, Britain is first out of this, Britain has invaded Omicron, our reinforced program is to hit the world and so on’ ,” he told Radio Times.
The reopening came as statistics showed Britain’s economy grew by a larger-than-expected 7.5% in 2021, despite the Omicron-driven slowdown at the end of the year. Reimposing some restrictions in response to the highly transmissible variable led to a 0.2% contraction in December.
The Office for National Statistics said the growth comes after a 9.4% contraction in 2020 as the pandemic shut down large parts of the economy. The British economy is now back to the size it was in February 2020, before the new coronavirus swept the UK
Britain has recorded the highest death toll from the Corona virus in Europe after Russia, with more than 159,000 deaths officially recorded. The country has seen a decline in both new infections and hospitalized COVID-19 patients since the omicron’s spike peaked in early January.
Officials have credited the government’s enhanced injection program with preventing the surge in omicron cases from causing serious stress to UK hospitals. In Britain, 84.6% of people aged 12 and over got two doses of the vaccine and nearly two-thirds of them got a third booster dose.
AOQ