Negative COVID19 Test Required for Travel to UK

Most travellers to the UK now need to provide proof of a negative COVID19 test result taken up to 72 hours before departure.

Those travellers who are not exempt will also need to complete a Passenger Locator form and self-isolate for 10 days upon arrival in the UK.

The quarantine period can be shortened to as little as 5 days if a traveller pays for a test through the Test to Release scheme, and that test also returns a negative result. It is very important to note that travellers need to opt-in to the Test to Release scheme when they fill in the Passenger Locator form. More info on this scheme can be found on the UK Government's website, here.

It has not yet been clarified how the self-isolation period in the UK will be policed, though it has been mentioned that it will be more strictly enforced than before.

The new measures, which came into effect early on Monday morning, are designed to try and stop new variants of COVID19 from entering and spreading within the country. They will remain in place until 15 February 2021, at the earliest.

The UK is one of the worst affected countries in the world, reporting 37,535 new cases and 599 new deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID19 result on Monday, 18 January 2021 alone.

According to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, the UK recorded 3,405,740 cases and 89,429 deaths as of 06:21 GMT on 18 January 2021, ranking the country as 5th in the world for both counts.

The B.1.1.7. variant was first discovered in the UK in September 2020, but only made global headlines in December 2020 after the number of new cases in the south east of England started rising rapidly. Scientists believe that B.1.1.7. has much higher rates of transmissibility. The P.1 variant from Brazil and the 501Y.V2 variant from South Africa are also being very closely monitored by scientists around the world as variants of concern

Whilst the number of jobs which are exempt from the new travel restrictions is much fewer than before, there is still a considerable amount of people who are exempt. The full list can be found on the UK Government's website, here.

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