For those planning to travel to the UK this fall and winter from the UAE, the quarantine has ended, but only for those vaccinated by three UK-recognized vaccines.
According to Simon Penny, the UK’s Trade Commissioner for the Middle East, only Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AztraZeneca will be official recognized for UAE-UK travel, according to an interview with Dubai Eye’s Business Breakfast radio show.
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This means that Sinopharm will reportedly not regonized for UAE-UK Travel, and thus those vaccinated by Sinopharm will have to quarantine.
UAE nationals and residents who are vaccinated will no longer need to quarantine when visiting the UK starting October 4.
This came from James Cleverly, Minister for Middle East and North Africa at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, who tweeted the news on Saturday.
“Delighted that international travel is opening up. We are finalising arrangements with [the] UAE to include their nationals and residents in our plans to open up to the fully vaccinated from other countries from October 4.”
According to Grant Shapps, the UK Transport General Secretary, October 4 will see the start of a complete overhaul of the travel system, called the ‘traffic light system’, which will be replaced with a unified red list that mandates hotel quarantine in addition to mandates on vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers from countries not on that list.
Other nations that will be removed from the red list include Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey, with Sri Lanka, Oman, Kenya, Bangladesh and the Maldives also to have restrictions ease.
At the moment, all those coming from the UAE have to quarantine for 10 days on arrival, with five spent in private residence while in the United Kingdom, with the quarantine lifted if a PCR test comes back negative on the fifth day.
For those still on red list countries, a required 10-day hotel quarantine stay inside a hotel approved by the government runs £2,285 per person.
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