Yahoo Finance Green list countries - latest: Travel firms see surge in holiday bookings as UK ‘could be Covid-free by summer’
Travel firms are urging the government to expand the number of countries on its green list for quarantine-free travel in summer. Just 12 destinations are on the list – and not all of them are accepting international visitors.
EasyJet boss Johan Lundgren has said that the lack of European destinations on the list is “not justified by the data or the science”, while British Airways boss Sean Doyle called the move “disappointing”. Transport secretary Grant Shapps said that the steps the government are taking to resume international travel are “necessarily cautious”.
Among the countries it will be possible to travel to from 17 May is Portugal, to which holiday bookings “surged” after the government’s announcement, according to Thomas Cook. A representative for the airline said that although the firm experienced a sudden uptick in bookings, numbers are still down on where they’d ordinarily be at this time of year.
Meanwhile, the outgoing chief of the UK’s vaccine task force has said that he doesn’t believe Covid-19 will be circulating the country in summer. Clive Dix told The Telegraph: “We’ll have probably protected the population from all the variants that are known. ... We’ll be safe over the coming winter.”
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