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Canary Islands removed from travel corridor list
Sadly yet another country has appeared on the travel corridor list briefly only to be withdrawn a few weeks later after everyone has just booked a holiday there! From Saturday12th at 4am, anyone arriving from the Canary Islands will have to quarantine for 14 days. The only good news is that in 5 days time on 15 December, the quarantine period is reduced to 5 days with a test on day 5 and then once a negative result is received you can be released from quarantine. So realistically you are looking at 6-7 days. The test has to be booked at an approved test facility. Despite the fact that the government is busy touting this new improvement, there is still no list of approved facilities! This could be a fairly crucial factor if you have to travel for several hours to get to one. It should really not be that difficult to publish a list with less than a week to go!
As usual, a few more random places were added which will be of little interest to most UK travellers – Botswana and Saudi Arabia.
EU says testing & quarantine not recommended for travellers
I have always thought that as far as travel is concerned, there are only really two ways to approach it, you either go the Australia/New Zealand route and aim for zero cases with very strong border control or you learn to live with it in a safe and pragmatic way. Sadly we are taking neither approach. A new study by highly respected independent organisations – EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control argues that air travellers account for less than one percent of all detected Covid-19.
The report pretty much goes against everything the UK government have been basing their policies on. It is not the first report to say this as another report recently concluded that quarantine was pointless in the UK unless it was properly enforced.
The report concluded that:
- In the current epidemiological situation, where SARS-CoV-2 is established in all EU/EEA countries and the UK, imported cases account for a very small proportion of all detected cases and are unlikely to significantly increase the rate of transmission.
- he prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in travellers is estimated likely to be lower than the prevalence in the general population or among contacts of confirmed cases.
- Travellers should not be considered as a high-risk population, nor treated as contacts of COVID-19 cases, unless they had been in known contact with a confirmed positive case.
- Travellers should be subject to the same regulations or recommendations as applied to the local population.
- Member States of the EU should always admit their own nationals and EU citizens and their family members resident in their territory, and should facilitate swift transit through their territories.
The report also recommends that:
In the current epidemiological situation, quarantine or systematic testing for SARS-CoV-2 of air travellers is not recommended.
Personally, I am a fan of testing prior to departure, even if it was just a rapid test. Given the growing numbers of people refusing to wear masks, I would rather know that if someone has a negative test if they are near me!
I doubt the government will pay much attention, but it makes interesting reading.
8 comments
You seem to put a lot of weight/belief on wearing masks:there is no evidence they actually help either the wearer or the people near them. A properly fitted FFP3 mask will protect the wearer, but not those around them. Normal face masks or random bits of cloth do nothing, especially if not worn properly.
There is a significant body of evidence and studies confirming a correlation of reduced infectivity with the wearing of masks and multiple modelling studies showing that masks reduce droplet transmission.
The ‘lack of evidence’ quoted by mask sceptics is that proper scientific studies quite rightly say that without the ability to conduct blind trials and remove other factors it is not possible to definitively prove that masks are reducing actual infections as it may be other behavioural factors that mean people who wear masks have lower infection rates.
PS. A properly fitted FFP2/3 mask without an exhalation valve offers equal protection in both directions
A great summary. Interesting how mask scepticism doesn’t extend to a surgeon operating on them. Imagine if the surgeon said” I read some stuff on Facebook that says masks don’t work, so I’ll not bother wearing one for your surgery. I’ve a bit of a cold and hacking cough but I’m sure it will be fine!
What a load of bulls hit the canary government over ruled Madrid to get tourism back to the island’s and Madrid have spit there dummy out it will also help with the rip off companies who were charging over £150 for a pcr test well done canary island
Totally DISGUSTED with schapps. Lanzarote is one of the safest islands to be on. My wife had to go back to the uk has her father caught covid 19 in hospital. I am due to fly home 16th December but now I wont be able to be with my wife at Christmas.I am so angry with this STUPID decision by Schapps. Very disappointed Mr.Langford.
Hopefully you can do the reduced quarantine with testing so you should be free in time for Christmas. The problem will small populations is it takes a tiny number of cases to make the numbers per 100,000 look bad. In fact the island probably has far more people most of the time but they are not counted as residents.
I agree that I would rather everyone was tested before being allowed to travel. Surely this would allow the borders to open and travel could try and get back to normal. The quarantine on return is a farce as it is not controlled or monitored so what is the point. And most of the countries people are coming back from have less cases than we do and are managing the situation a lot better.
Exactly!
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