LONDON, March 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) —Cyprus and Portugal say they hope to welcome vaccinated British tourists from May – the month when travel restrictions may be lifted in the UK.
The Cypriot government said those who had two Covid jabs could travel, while Portugal said those who tested negative or were “immune” could also visit.
The earliest date those in England could go abroad for holidays is May 17, following a review on travel rules.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said it is still “too early” to book a foreign trip.
Under current rules, foreign travel from the UK is banned apart from for exceptional reasons.
From Monday, passengers travelling internationally from England will have to carry a form stating their trip is permitted, the Department for Transport has announced. It will be an offence to fail to produce a completed form. Those who do not have one could be fined £200.
But once travel is allowed again, the success of the UK’s vaccination programme makes Britons especially attractive to countries wanting to attract holidaymakers, especially those European countries which are traditionally popular with British tourists.
Portugal is currently on the UK’s red list, meaning travellers coming from there have to quarantine in the UK when they arrive.
Rita Marques, Portugal’s secretary of state for tourism, said that the situation in Portugal was “stable” and said, “Everything will be ready by mid May.”
The decision to lift restrictions on travel abroad still depends on vaccine rollout in the UK and abroad, the effectiveness of the vaccine, the prevalence of the virus and its variants.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have not set a date for the start of international travel.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she hopes a certification scheme could allow vaccinated holidaymakers to journey abroad – but warned Scotland was still “some way away” from such a programme. She said she could not advise people to “fly off to the sun” before there was a degree of certainty it could be done without risk.
Going on holiday is currently still illegal, but the prime minister’s roadmap last week has left many optimistic that that will change soon.
Cyprus’s deputy tourism minister, Savvas Perdios, said the country would allow Britons who had been given vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to enter without the need for a negative test or to quarantine.
Currently the Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs have been approved for use by the EMA.
Tourists would be required to have had their second dose at least seven days before travelling, the minister added.
British tourists make up the largest group of visitors to the island and made more than a million trips to Cyprus in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Other countries are optimistic they could be seeing British tourists back soon.
“We believe that summer has to be the beginning of the end of this bad experience,” says Fernando Valdes, Spain’s secretary of state for tourism. “I can’t give a specific date, that will depend on how the pandemic evolves.”
He said it depended how the vaccination programme was going in both countries – but noted “the UK is increasingly moving towards their goals”.
Greece has also said it hopes to open this summer, saying its government is taking all the necessary actions for this to happen. — NNN-AGENCIES
