The Secretary of State Grant Shapps has this week chaired the first meeting of the new Global Travel Taskforce to set out a plan for restarting international travel in a safe and sustainable way.
Several government departments, industry bodies, transport operators and travel agencies met to discuss the work of the taskforce and how international travel can be re-opened safely. This includes developing a new risk-based framework to facilitate international travel, using the measures the government already has in place, such as testing and isolation, and the recommendations from the first Global Travel Taskforce last year.
They will also look at how existing measures, such as the government’s testing and isolation schemes, could be used to facilitate travel while managing the risk of imported cases and ‘variants of concern’.
It will also take place in parallel and be closely integrated with the review into COVID-status certification led by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
The taskforce will provide a report to the Prime Minister on 12 April, which will be used to help government determine when and how to resume safe international travel no earlier than 17 May 2021.
The decision on when international travel can resume will be dependent on:
- the global and domestic epidemiological picture
- the prevalence and location of any ‘variants of concern’
- the progress of vaccine rollouts here and abroad
- what more the government has learned about the efficacy of vaccines on variants, and the impact on transmission, hospitalisation and deaths
The taskforce will provide a report to the Prime Minister on 12 April, which will be used to help government determine when and how to resume safe international travel no earlier than 17 May 2021.
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