The Secretary of State has today (Tuesday 2nd March) chaired the
first meeting of the new Global Travel Taskforce, to develop a
plan for restarting international travel in a safe and
sustainable way.
Several Government departments, industry bodies, transport
operators and travel agencies met to discuss the work of the
Taskforce and how international travel can be re-opened safely.
This includes developing a new risk-based framework to
facilitate international travel, making use of the suite of
measures the Government already has in place such as testing
and isolation and the recommendations from the first Global
Travel Taskforce last year.
They will also look at how existing measures, such as the
Government’s testing and isolation schemes could be used to
facilitate travel while managing the risk from imported cases
and Variants of Concern. It will take place in parallel and be
closely integrated with the review into COVID-status
certification led by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
The Taskforce will provide a report to the Prime Minister on 12
April, which will be used to help Government determine when and
how to resume safe international no earlier than 17 May.
The decision on when international travel can resume will be
dependent on the global and domestic epidemiological picture,
the prevalence and location of any Variants of Concern, the
progress of vaccine rollouts here and abroad, and what more the
Government has learned about the efficacy of vaccines on
variants, and the impact on transmission, hospitalisation and
deaths.
All measures will be kept under review and people should
continue to follow National restrictions
for England introduced on 6 January 2021, meaning everyone
must stay at home unless travelling for a very limited set of
reasons.
Secretary of State for Transport
said:
“The UK’s leading vaccine rollout has created a wave of
optimism and, as a result, the Global Travel Taskforce is
charged with exploring safe and secure ways to restart
international travel when the time is right.
“By planning carefully considered steps, we will protect the
excellent progress made through our vaccine and advanced
testing programme, whilst ensuring we are ready to kick-start
our travel sector when current travel restrictions can be
lifted.
“We will not only consider the progress of our world-beating
domestic vaccine programme, but also need to review where
destination countries have got to with both vaccine and
testing capabilities.”
The Government has already put in place a range of tough
measures that continue to apply to minimise the risk of
COVID-19 transmission at the border, including the introduction
of pre-departure testing for all international arrivals, the
requirement for those travelling back to the UK from a “red
list” country to self-isolate in a Government approved facility
for a period of 10 days while there is a heightened risk of
transmission from these areas.
All international arrivals must also take a COVID-19 test on
both on day 2 and day 8 of their self-isolation period, – with
genome sequencing included within the cost of the testing
bundle.
Passengers arriving from “non-red list” countries still have
the option to pay for a private test and shorten their
self-isolation period by up to half through Test to Release, on
receipt of a negative COVID-19 result.
