All travel restrictions previously imposed in the UK due to the coronavirus epidemic were lifted on Friday.
Under a measure announced by the British government earlier this week, from 4 a.m. British time – 5 a.m. Central European Time – those arriving from abroad will not be required to complete a passenger locator form and no one will be required to take a coronavirus test.
The complete abolition of the testing obligation also applies to entrants who do not have a full vaccination against the coronavirus.
Full vaccination against the coronavirus is currently defined by the British government as two doses of vaccine and, as appropriate, one dose of the single-component Janssen vaccine.
The UK government currently recognizes vaccines from Covaxin, Moderna, Janssen, Novavax (Nuvaxovid and Covovax), Oxford / AstraZeneca, Pfizer / BioNTech, and Sinopharm and Sinovac in China.
Those who have not been fully vaccinated have so far had to show a negative result to a coronavirus test two days before departure in order to enter the UK and have to have a PCR test by the end of the second day after arrival.
As of Friday, these regulations have also been lifted, meaning that those who do not qualify as fully vaccinated according to British criteria will no longer have to be screened for coronavirus before or after arrival.
According to the official justification, the decision is in line with the British government’s recently outlined strategy, which is based on the need to continue to live with the coronavirus without restricting individual freedoms.
According to the government, the decision to completely lift travel restrictions is also part of the success of the British vaccination campaign.
According to the latest information from the British Department of Health on Thursday night, 85.6 percent of the British population have received two doses of the vaccine so far, and 67.1 percent have also received a third booster dose.
A total of more than 140.5 million of the first, second, and third vaccination doses have been given in the UK so far.
From the end of March, the British government will also release the hotel capacity reserved for entrants who had to travel to guarded quarantine hotels upon arrival.
This requirement has applied to those coming from countries declared to be particularly dangerous from an epidemiological point of view, but the regulation has not been used in practice for months and the “red list” reserved for such countries has long been empty.
MTI
