Domestic holidays in the UK will be possible this year but any claiming that the coronavirus pandemic will be over by the time lockdown is eased in England on June 21st is “a little bit tricky”, Jason Leitch has said.
Leitch held out hope for domestic holidays this summer as he said vaccination has gone “incredibly well” in the UK but was cautious about international travel.
The Scottish government’s senior adviser on covid said: “I think UK travel will be possible in 2021 but I’m not sure when, that will depend on prevalence. Everything depends on prevalence. The hospitals are still very busy, 10,500 people across the UK admitted in the last seven days. So we’re talking about May, June July, domestic travel may well be possible.”
However, he added: “International travel worries me for different reasons because we don’t have any control over what’s happening in the destination. You’re going to be careful about what travel corridors might look like.”
The Scottish Government’s national clinical director urged caution over Boris Johnson’s mid-summer date as the earliest deadline that all restrictions could be lifted and the economy fully re-opened.
Speaking ahead of Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement on Scotland’s routemap out of lockdown Leitch said attaching exact dates to opening up the economy was very difficult.
He told BBC Scotland: ““We will talk about weeks and gaps but you may not get that all bets are off by X date.”
Leitch added : “Assertions about June 21st is a little bit tricky because we thought we knew stuff in November, and we got a new variant in December. So, we need to be cautious but actually the order in which they’ve done things schools ,children, families, business, I think is roughly what you’ll hear today because the First Minister’s already kind of said that out loud.”
Leitch also confirmed that officials are looking at the idea of vaccine passports to allow travel abroad.
He said: “The world is looking at it, probably better called vaccine certification or covid certification. It might be you’ve had your 72 hour test showing you were negative on the day you had your test. Vaccination could be part of that but we need to be careful, there are potential challenges."
He added: "Some groups are harder to reach with the vaccine so it’s something we should investigate and think about but I’m not sure we should make a choice on at this stage in the pandemic.”
