There may be a dozen countries on the UK’s green list for safe international travel, but only four will allow UK tourists to get there for a holiday without quarantine.
Portugal, including its island territories of the Azores and Madeira; Israel; Gibraltar; Australia; New Zealand; Singapore; Brunei; Iceland; The Faroe Islands; The Falkland Islands; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and Saint Helena, Tristan de Cunha and Ascension Island are the 12 countries Britain will allow people to travel to and return to without quarantine requirements, as announced on Friday.
But of these, only Portugal – including the Azores and Madeira – and Gibraltar will allow British tourists to visit without quarantine or vaccination requirements, while Iceland and Israel will allow British tourists to enter, but only if they are vaccinated against Covid-19.
Flights to Portugal, including Madeira, depart from Newcastle International Airport.
Australia, New Zealand and Singapore remain closed to British tourists, even though they are on the British government’s green list. The Faroe Islands require people to self-isolate for 10 days upon arrival, or four days after taking a PCR test. Britons disembarking in Brunei will have to quarantine themselves for two weeks and fork out for a test of £ 188, reports Mirror Online.
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Saint Helena, Tristan de Cunha and Ascension Island require arrivals to be isolated for 14 days, while South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are an isolated group of islands in the Atlantic South without permanent residents, need a visitor’s permit to access regardless of the coronavirus. .
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said removing restrictions on international travel was “necessarily prudent” and the government must “absolutely make sure” that countries the UK reconnects with are safe.
He said: “We in this country have succeeded in building a fortress against Covid. But the disease is still prevalent in other parts of the world, most notably right now in India.
“In fact, more new cases of Covid have been diagnosed globally in the past seven days than at any time since the start of the pandemic.”
He added: “This is why today’s announcement removing UK stay restrictions from May 17 is necessarily prudent.
“We absolutely have to make sure that the countries we reconnect with are safe, that their infection rates are low and their vaccination rates are high.
“This means making sure we don’t incubate the more dangerous variants that they aren’t and that they have safe and secure monitoring in place.”