Of the 12 countries and regions included in the British government’s “green list”, which allow travel for non-essential reasons and do not require quarantine to return for a period of 10 days, seven do not allow tourists to enter, such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei and the Falkland Islands.
The fact that it is one of the few beach destinations on the list, which left out popular countries like Spain, Greece and Turkey, has led to a spike in orders and reservations.
TUI Group has requested Agência Lusa to add five additional flights per week starting today and has allocated more spacious aircraft for additional capacity.
Starting today, people in England will also be able to dine inside restaurants or have beer in the “pub”, instead of limiting them to the terraces as they have been until now, and visiting family or friends inside the house and hugging with them.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are following similar, but slightly different, reopening pathways.
Other entertainment venues, such as cinemas, museums, theaters and concert halls, may reopen, albeit with capacity restrictions for large events.
However, enthusiasm to reopen tourism and restoration is overshadowed by concern that a different type of coronavirus discovered in India is causing it to spread rapidly.
The number of cases of variant B1.617.2 has more than doubled in one week in the UK, defying a sharp downward trend across the country in injuries and deaths in recent weeks.
Door-to-door screening and calls to vaccinate people are taking place in the hardest hit areas of northern England.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC on Sunday that the variant was more transmissible than the main one discovered in England last year and was “likely to become the dominant variant”.
“But the good news is that we are increasingly confident that the vaccine works against the alternative, and the strategy is on the right track. The virus has only gained a bit of momentum, so we all have to be more careful and cautious,” he said.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not rule out delaying the fourth phase of the deflationary plan, scheduled for June 21, when the government intends to lift all restrictions and social distancing measures.
He also said that he does not plan to increase the “green list” that is supposed to be reviewed every three weeks in the near future.
The UK has recorded nearly 128,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, the highest in Europe and the fifth globally.
The number of cases decreased to an average of about 2000 cases per day, compared to about 70 thousand cases per day during the peak of winter, and deaths decreased to one number per day.
Nearly 70% of British adults received their first dose of the Coronavirus vaccine and 38% received both doses.
BM // JMR
Lusa / The End
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