DOUBLE-vaccinated Brits won’t have to isolate after foreign trips, a top Public Health England medic has hinted.
Dr Susan Hopkins said there may be “alternatives to isolation” for holidaymakers who have received both of their Covid jabs.
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Asked if there is a chance those who have had two jabs could go abroad, she told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We’ll be looking at the evidence from other countries.
“We’ve talked a lot to countries like Israel who are ahead of us in the vaccination campaign, and they are now really looking at allowing people to come into their country who’ve had two vaccines and not needing to isolate.
“And they are allowing their population to travel more.
“We will need to be alert and will need to consider how we can measure the response of these vaccines to new variants that come along.
“But we are moving steps forward, and I think that in a time in the future, I’m not sure when, I can imagine a situation where we will have alternatives to isolation for people who have two doses of the vaccine.”
When asked about holidaying this summer, she said: “It depends on the routes and the risks. That will be for Government to decide what they want to do.
HOL HOPE
“I think we should be predominantly deciding to holiday at home this summer while we get everyone vaccinated.”
This comes after data shows cases across the UK are rising again at an alarming rate.
According to Professor Adam Finn, who advises the Government on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the UK is now in the grips of a third wave.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s going up, perhaps we can be a little bit optimistic it’s not going up any faster, but nevertheless it’s going up, so this third wave is definitely under way.”
As it stands, people travelling to the UK from red list countries will have to quarantine in a specialist hotel on arrival.
A mandatory 10-day stay in one of these hotels will cost travellers £1,750 each.
If passengers leave the quarantine hotel before their 10 days are up, they will be handed a £5,000 coronavirus fine, but this figure can increase up to £10,000.
And people travelling to the UK from amber list countries have to quarantine for 10 days at home.
All amber list arrivals will also need a pre-arrival Covid test, as well as tests on day two and day eight of quarantine.
However, Brits can pay for a fourth test as part of the Test to Release scheme, meaning they can leave the self-isolation earlier.
And yesterday, Britain recorded over 10,000 coronavirus cases for the third day in a row.
And the Covid death toll has increased by 14 in the last 24 hours – bringing the grim total to 127,970.
The data shows that 10,321 people have tested positive for the deadly virus today, with the total number of Brits infected since the pandemic begun standing at 4,620,968.
And this is the third day in a row that cases of Covid have surpassed 10,000 – a tragic rate milestone to reach.
The last time daily infections were so high was February 23, when Britain was in the midst of total lockdown.
Deaths also rose by 14 today – higher than Friday’s 11.
