UK Will No Longer Require Testing for Vaccinated Visitors
The British government announced Monday that it will soon end coronavirus travel testing requirements for vaccinated visitors. The new comes just days after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that coronavirus restrictions would be eased in the country.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the change on testing requirements would take effect on February 11, 2022.
Currently, travelers who have had at least two vaccine doses must take a rapid test within two days of arriving in the U.K. Those who are unvaccinated face stricter testing and quarantine rules.
On February 11th, testing requirements will be lifted for vaccinated adults and all children under 18. The unvaccinated will still have to take coronavirus tests before and after traveling to Britain but will no longer face a quarantine period, ABC News reports.
Britain saw a spike in new cases in December. But with the Omicron variant, hospitalizations and deaths have remained well below previous pandemic surges.
Britain has seen over 154,000 deaths so far during the pandemic. That’s a rate of
2,290 deaths per 1 million people. That’s not far of from the United States which so far has 2,634 deaths per million.
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This means I can finally take the trip to London that I’ve had to put off since 2020.
Hawaii has the same policy.
Though everyone can be infected with Omicron and other variants, the doubly vaxxed are over 90% less likely to be hospitalized.
No country wants to have tourists in their hospitals. Even if the tourists can pay their hospital bills, sick tourists tie up doctors, nurses, medicines, and other resources that countries want used for their own people.
Also, tourists sick in hospitals are not out spending money on touristy stuff, so they do not benefit the economy the way healthy tourists do.
Interesting, since most of the people I personally know that are getting COVID, ARE vaccinated. Wake me up when it starts making sense.
The job of the vaccine is to stop deaths and severe hospitalize of the infected, your individual genetic health, underlying conditions, human environment and hygiene is going to mostly determine if you get infected. Things are much more complex than simply expecting the vaccine to be a magic bullet.