Clitheroekid wrote:If you've had both doses of the vaccine then you should be allowed to travel freely. However, if you're travelling to a `red list' country it would be reasonable to insist that you have a rapid result test on re-entry.
I don't know how quick a reliable test is now, but I'm assuming it could be processed within 24 hours, so you might have to spend a night in a quarantine hotel, which I'm sure most people would accept as being a reasonable price to pay.
By the time there's any propsect of overseas travel (late May, at the earliest) the large majority of the UK population will have been vaccinated, so the risk of infecting anyone when returning home will be minimal. Likewise, if you're travelling to a high risk area there will probably be some form of local lockdown, which will minimise your exposure to local people.
There will always be some risk of catching a new variant and bringing it back, but it's a risk that is now there permanently, and it has to be balanced against the desirability of allowing people to travel. The risk is unlikely to be significantly lower in a year's time or five years' time, so all that closing the borders would achieve is to postpone the risk. In fact, there may even be an argument that if there are new variants it may be better to import them in the relatively near future, when immunity will be at its highest, than to do so in a year's time.
Like AiY I've got flights for late August, but I'm frankly sick of lockdown life in the UK, and I fully intend to go abroad as soon as it's possible to do so.
Yep, pretty much that. It has been a year. The most vulnerable have already died and most of the rest of the quasi-vulnerable are or will soon be vaccinated. Enough already. The people need a release or this country will become ungovernable. In fact that hot mess in Bristol the other night was a direct product of the collective frustration the people feel.
Rapid testing and vaccination certificates are the solution. I am flying out in late May come hell or high water. The only issue is whether I come back if this government does not grow a spine.