US Insists On COVID Tests For ALL UK Airline Passengers

All airline passengers arriving in the US from the UK are to be required to test negative for Covid-19 within 72 hours of departure amid concerns about the new coronavirus variant. From 28 December onwards, ALL travellers will now need to provide written documentation of their lab-test result to airlines. The variant has seen other countries shut their borders to UK flights.

The move comes as a growing number of countries banned British travellers amid the rapid spread of a new variant of coronavirus in London and elsewhere in the European nation. Passengers arriving in New York City on Virgin flights from the United Kingdom said they didn’t have to take a COVID test before boarding Tuesday, Dec. 25, despite the discovery of a new mutant strain of the virus in Britain that is 70 per cent more infectious.

Earlier on Thursday, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines said they were requiring all passengers on flights from the United Kingdom to the United States to present a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure. British Airways was the first UK airline to ask for a negative test before departure to New York earlier this week, Virgin and Delta were soon to follow.

US airlines have British airways drastically scaled back flying to the UK and Europe, after the entry of most foreign nationals was suspended at the start of the pandemic. Health officials say there is no evidence the new variant was more deadly or would react differently to vaccines, but it was proving to be up to 70% more transmissible.

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