UK making good progress on travel testing to cut quarantine - minister

Britain is making good progress with a plan to allow COVID-19 tests to cut a 14-day quarantine period for those returning from abroad, a change which could help fuel a travel recovery once current lockdowns end, the transport minister said. Airport bosses welcomed the update from the minister, Grant Shapps, at an online conference but said more needed to be done. The top priority for them is that the government eliminates the requirement for quarantine through testing for the coronavirus. “We’re making very good progress on a ‘test to release programme’ to launch once we’re out of this lockdown,” Shapps said Monday. “Once we emerge from the lockdown, we can roll out new systems to help get people flying and travelling again.” UK airports and airlines said that a shorter quarantine period was even more crucial after a new four-week lockdown imposed in England until Dec. 2 wiped out any of the remaining meagre income they were still making from low levels of travel during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have called for extra government help, asking for tax holidays from requirements such as air passenger duty and business rates. But Shapps said the primary solution to aviation companies’ financial problems would be getting customers flying again, “ideally through the development of an effective vaccine”.<br/>