Fares Fair Travel Management

Fully vaccinated travellers will soon get fast-track lanes at Heathrow Airport under plans to open quarantine-free travel to the UK for fully vaccinated arrivals from amber list countries.

 Travellers can digitally upload their vaccination certificates before their flight, then present them on arrival, to be directed to separate lanes at immigration to fast-track them through border control and prevent queues.

Heathrow will launch a trial of the system by July 10 to persuade Ministers to allow quarantine-free travel, effective from July 19, says The Telegraph.

 Fully vaccinated travellers from Athens, New York, Los Angeles, and Montego Bay in Jamaica will be offered the chance to participate in the fast-track trial. Their unvaccinated children will also be eligible.

It will also be open to Britons who will upload their NHS app or paper certificate, US travellers who only have paper certificates, and EU citizens whose status is shown on new digital COVID passes.

Two EU countries have put time limits on the validity of vaccination certificates for inbound visitors as the question of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines over time is being examined by scientists globally.

Austria will only accept travellers who have been fully vaccinated within 270 days of travel. For Croatia, those who received their second shot within 210 days of travel will be allowed entry.

This means that travellers who have received their second shot during August, for example, will be able to visit Austria up to a date in May 2022, and Croatia only up to a date in March 2022.

Several governments, including the US and the UK, are now mooting the idea of booster jabs, after it was found that the immunity afforded by vaccinations appears to recede slightly over time, although the vaccines’ protection against severe symptoms remains high.

US federal health authorities have recommended booster shots for all adults already fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna vaccines (and possibly those immunised with Johnson & Johnson too), but there remains some scientific disagreement on this. The WHO has criticised the decision to give US citizens a third shot while most people around the world haven’t had even one.

The UK government says it will start a booster programme in September for those who first received vaccines originally.

The UK health authority has also said vaccines designed specifically for variants of concern would not yet be available by the Northern hemisphere autumn, but would be considered once they were available.

The question of mixing vaccines has been raised but a decision has not yet been reached (people receiving a different booster vaccine from that of their first and second shots).