Britain to keep restrictions on overseas travel in place

Bloomberg

The UK government signalled it will keep restrictions on overseas travel in place for now to control a surge in coronavirus infections and the risk of new variants of the virus taking hold.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said “normal” holidays were “never going to be the case” this year because of increasing Covid-19 cases. His comments indicate increasing concern about a third wave of cases in the UK despite one of the world’s most aggressive vaccination programs.
“There are going to have to be significant trade-offs” Buckland said on Sky News’s Trevor Phillips show.
“We’ve tried to strike the right balance between the natural need in some cases for international travel, but also the imperative of making sure
that we do everything we
can at home to contain and prevent inadvertent spread of new variants.”
The remarks are a blow to airlines and a growing number of members of Parliament in the ruling Conservative Party pressing for the government to loosen restrictions. While the US and European Union are starting to open borders for travel, Britain has rules requiring quarantine and Covid testing for travellers arriving from most places.
Liam Fox, the former Conservative cabinet minister in charge of trade policy, urged the government to find a way for those who have received two doses of a vaccine to travel without having to quarantine.
“The world cannot be closed down and that, sooner or later, we will have to learn to live with Covid-19 just as we have learned to live with other viral illnesses over time,” Fox wrote in a column for the Mail.
Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office confirmed that officials are considering plans to open up international travel for passengers who’ve been fully inoculated.
For now, health authorities are urging the government to move slowly in lowering restrictions, especially on foreign travel.
“The extra time to vaccinate more people, get two doses of vaccination in as many people as possible will hopefully mean that what we’re seeing with this wave won’t look the same as the previous waves that we’ve seen in this country,” Susan Hopkins, the strategic response director at Public Health England, said.
The number of flights into and out of the UK has plunged 73% from 2019 levels, eliminating or putting on furlough 860,000 jobs in travel and tourism that now risk being lost, according to the British Airline Pilots Association.