England Will Remove All International Tourist Entrance Restrictions

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps stated Monday that on March 18, the United Kingdom would remove all remaining entrance restrictions for overseas travelers.

In order to enter the country, unvaccinated citizens of the United States and other countries must produce a negative Covid-19 test completed no more than two days before travel, as well as another PCR test performed within the first two days of arrival.

However, this is no longer the case. According to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, “all remaining Covid travel measures, including the Passenger Locator Form and testing for all arrivals, will be suspended for travel to the United Kingdom beginning at 4 a.m. on March 18.”

Similar to this, Heathrow Airport, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic have stated that the necessity to wear a mask on certain flights would be phased away starting March 16th.

“These modifications are achievable as a result of our vaccination deployment and will provide more flexibility in time for Easter,” Shapps said.

Official figures from the United Kingdom’s Department for Health show that 86 percent of the country’s population aged 12 and over had gotten two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine by Sunday.

All of these choices are being made as the Covid-19 situation in the United Kingdom continues to deteriorate, with health professionals becoming more concerned about the rapidly increasing number of residents needing hospitalization.

There were 10,576 new hospitalizations last week, an increase of 19 percent from the previous week. During the previous week, 444,201 positive cases were recorded, signifying a 48.1 percent increase over the previous week.

In other EU countries, such as France, a similar scenario has been seen, with the seven-day case average reaching 60,323, representing a 16.5 percent increase over the previous week.

Every age group is seeing a rise in the number of incidents at a comparable pace. BA2 is a sub-variant of Omicron that is considered to be responsible for the increase in occurrence in both countries.