LONDON: The British government said on Friday it was expected to announce plans in the next two weeks which allowed entry into strangers who were fully vaccinated and expatriated by Britain, because they eliminate most coronavirus sidewalks.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps also defended the government’s decision to enable 1,000 football fans from Italy for the European Championship Final Sunday against England, to join around 60,000 other supporters.
Many scientists worried that the government’s plan to lift most of the sidewalks in the UK on July 19, and the green light to a large presence in the Football Final, would cause a new Covid-19 outbreak.
Shapps said fans from Italy would be on special charter flights, living in London only 12 hours and had a separate zone at Wembley Stadium, and returned home after the match.
“They can’t travel to another place,” he told Sky News, called it a “very limited program”.
The government said on Thursday that starting July 19, British residents who were fully vaccinated and children would no longer be quarantined to them back to England.
This announcement makes summer trips easier for several favorite vacation destinations of Britons, including France, Greece and Spain.
But the plan is limited to travelers who receive their vaccinations through British health services, not including expatriates and foreigners affixed abroad, triggering criticism from expatients in particular.
Shapps say expanding schemes for expatriates and other tourists from abroad is “something we are working on at this time”.
The minister said he hoped “in the next few weeks I will be able to advance and say more about other locations in the world”.
However, Shapps added it was “it’s easier to do than some places like the EU where they have digital applications that come than in the United States, where I think they have 50 different systems, one for each state, mostly paper-based”.
The UK recorded 32,551 Covid cases on Thursday due to a surge in infection because the Delta variant was more contagious.
It already has one of the worst deaths in Europe, with more than 128,000 deaths.
But the government stressed that with vaccination keeping hospitalization and relatively low death, it’s time to start reopening the economy after the third locking.
Shapps plays worries, new travel rules can cause marathon queues at the UK airport as immigration officers check the details of the vaccination of each passenger.
He said the airline had instituted pre-departure checks to compile such information in front of the summer travel season.
But the Union of Immigration services said the border staff still had to check data, and that e-gates were faster not installed at all entry points.
Workers’ spokesman Lucy Moreton said the peak queue at the airport is now up to two hours and can increase to six hours with Covid inspection.
“This is a political decision to check 100 percent of Covid arrival and that most is a problem here,” he told BBC radio.
Moreton added that many immigration officers also tend to work if they were forced to isolate themselves, under the current government rules about Covid search which only ended on August 16.