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Summer promising for vaccinated Brits

Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair SmoutAAP
British citizens at present are essentially prevented from travelling to most countries.
Camera IconBritish citizens at present are essentially prevented from travelling to most countries. Credit: EPA

Britain is working on easing travel restrictions for the fully vaccinated to allow people to enjoy a summer holiday on Europe's beaches but the plans are not finalised yet, Health Secretary Matt Hancock says.

Currently, British citizens are essentially prevented from travelling to most countries - including those in the European Union - as the quarantine and testing rules are so cumbersome and expensive.

British tourists are the second-biggest outbound holiday spenders in Europe after Germans so their absence hurts the economies of southern Europe, while the British tourism sector is reeling from the restrictions.

Hancock told Sky News on Tuesday the government wanted to let people have a family holiday abroad, but only when it was safe to do so.

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"The whole point of the vaccine program is to be able to remove restrictions, and for people to be able to be kept safe by the vaccine, rather than by these rules," Hancock told LBC radio.

"So we are working on a plan for double-vaccinated people, using tests, to have that testing regime in place, instead of having to have the quarantine, in some circumstances."

For months, British ministers have given a host of contradictory signals about when and how travel rules will be eased more than a year since the most onerous restrictions in Britain's peacetime history were imposed to halt the virus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that travellers would face hassle and delays this year if they sought to go abroad because the priority would be keeping the country safe.

Johnson, who was slow to impose an initial lockdown in 2020, is wary of moving too fast to open up travel as the Delta variant first detected in India spreads.

Britain has the seventh-highest death toll from COVID-19 globally of nearly 128,000 deaths but has one of the fastest vaccine rollouts in the world, with 80 per cent of adults having received a first COVID-19 vaccine dose and nearly 60 per cent a second shot.

Popular European destinations for Britons, including Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece, are currently rated "amber", which require returning passengers to take three expensive COVID-19 tests and isolate for 10 days.

European Union countries have already agreed to an easing of travel restrictions over summer that will allow fully vaccinated tourists to avoid tests or quarantines.

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