United Kingdom prepares lifting of travel restrictions. Portugal in doubt

Dozens of countries will be exempted from travel and quarantine restrictions on entry into the UK as of Monday, but it remains to be seen whether Portugal will be included, British media reports this Thursday.

The Daily Telegraph reports that 75 low- or very low-risk countries will be covered, while The Times suggests that the list includes up to 95 countries and that it comprises almost the entire European Union, as well as Bermuda and Gibraltar, Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

The two newspapers remain uncertain about the inclusion of Portugal due to the outbreaks of people infected with coronaviruses identified in recent weeks in the country, namely in the outskirts of Lisbon.

The British government had indicated last week that it would select a limited number of “corridors” with some countries, which would be classified according to the colors of the traffic lights to signal the destinations most at risk of infection with covid-19.

However, some of these countries maintain travel restrictions on their side, such as Greece, which announced on Monday that it would maintain the quarantine requirement for people arriving from the UK until at least 15 July.

High-risk countries, such as the United States, Russia and Brazil, should be classified as red by the British government, the Daily Telegraph said today.

The mandatory two-week quarantine was imposed on June 8 on all arrivals from abroad to the UK to reduce the risk of cases imported from abroad and help prevent a second wave of the virus.

Now that the British government believes it has controlled the pandemic, it has begun a phased outbreak and on Monday, Transport Minister Grant Shapps confirmed that the partial removal of the quarantine was authorized by health authorities for low-risk countries.

The list of countries will have as factors not only the prevalence of coronavirus, but especially the number of new cases and the potential trajectory in the coming weeks of the disease in the country, he said at the time.

The executive chairman of the Red Savannah travel agency said today that the quarantine imposed on all foreign arrivals to the United Kingdom since June 8 was “useless” and detrimental to the tourism sector.

“There was no regulatory or economic assessment, no consultation was carried out. What it did in practice was to prevent the sector from, after four months without revenue, from getting back on its feet,” he criticized, speaking to the BBC this morning.

The United Kingdom recorded until Wednesday 43,906 deaths (in 313,483 cases of infection) during the covid-19 pandemic, the highest number in Europe and the third largest in the world, behind the USA and Brazil.

This week a local confinement was enacted in the city of Leicester due to an outbreak of infection cases in that city of 350,000 in central England.

Portugal accounts for at least 1,579 deaths associated with covid-19 in 42,454 confirmed cases of infection, according to the latest bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).

– .