LONDON — A terminal at London’s Heathrow Airport that was mothballed due to Covid-19 Pandemic last year reopened Tuesday to serve passengers arriving from high-risk nations.
Britain has barred travelers from a “red list” of 43 coronavirus hotspots including India, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa, fearing they could bring in worrisome virus variants. U.K. citizens and residents who return from those nations face a mandatory 10-day supervised quarantine in a government-approved hotel.
Beginning Tuesday, red list arrivals will move through the airport’s Terminal 3, which was closed in April 2020 as international air travel plummeted, leaving Heathrow — previously Europe’s busiest airport — largely empty.
Heathrow mentioned in a statement that it had to set up the new arrivals facility because “red list routes will likely be a feature of U.K. travel for the foreseeable future.”
The U.K. has recorded almost 128,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest toll in Europe. A mass vaccination campaign that began in December has brought new infections and deaths down sharply, but case numbers are once again rising as a more transmissible virus variant, named Delta by the World Health Organization and first identified in India, spreads across the U.K.
On Tuesday, the government reported a further 3,165 confirmed COVID-19 cases, compared to about 2,500 cases last week. But Britain recorded no coronavirus deaths on Tuesday for the first time since July. Apart from July 30, there have been no days without officially recorded COVID-19 deaths since March 2020.
Still, rising case numbers have cast doubt on the Conservative government’s plans to lift social distancing rules and remaining pandemic-related restrictions on June 21. Many scientists are urging a delay, arguing that more individuals need to be vaccinated before measures can be eased safely.
Three-quarters of U.K. adults have had one dose of a coronavirus vaccine so far, and almost half have had both doses. Pop-up clinics have been set up as part of a “surge vaccination” campaign in hotspot areas, including one that inoculated thousands of individuals Monday at London’s Twickenham rugby stadium.
On Tuesday, the Scottish government, which controls its own health policy, mentioned it would be cautious and delay plans to ease restrictions in the most populous parts of the nation because cases are rising.
“This is a pause, not a step backward,” First Minister Nicola Sturgeon mentioned.
The U.K. government says it will announce on June 14 whether the latest relaxation for England will be delayed.
“We will proceed to look at the data, we will proceed to look at the latest scientific evidence, as we move through June,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, Jamie Davies, mentioned Tuesday.
