Mal-teaser: Brits have just five days to skip quarantine in green list Malta for unvaccinated UK tourists
On the same day Malta will become the only European nation to be added to the UK’s travel green list, the government in Valletta is slap quarantine rules on Brits who aren’t fully vaccinated from Wednesday.
The Maltese government is looking to follow orders from German chancellor Angela Merkel on EU states increasing restrictions on UK arrivals to protect the bloc from a surge in Delta-variant Covid cases.
From Wednesday, UK arrivals who have not recieved their second Covid-19 vaccination 14 days prior to landing will need to quarantin for up to two weeks, according to the Times of Malta.
That means that for any of the many millions UK travellers looking for some summer sun but who haven’t had their second jab 30 Wednesday is a date to focus on: fly out before that date and return after it and you’ll be spared many hundreds of pounds in PCR tests and days self-isolating.
UK tourists make up Malta’s largest inbound travel market, with 650,000 of us travelling to the island in 2019.
Grant Shapps’ announcement of additions to the UK’s travel green list unsuprisingly resulted in a surge of flight searches last night.
Data from Skyscanner found Brits search for flights from the UK to Malta jumped more than 800 per cent yesterday compared to the same day last week.
More than 30m Brits have had both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, so will avoid the pending quarantine rules.
It will be a blow to beleagured airlines and travel companies which were given a small boost by the addition of the Mediterranean island being added to the UK’s green list yesterday.
Ryanair only today announced that it was adding 200,000 extra seats to Malta, Ibiza and Mallorca for the summer.
Spain, meanwhile, rebuffed EU efforts to step up restrictions on UK arrivals, with Spanish tourism minister Maria Reyes Maroto reiterating today that they “don’t have any restrictions on tourists from the UK”.
“Hopefully we can begin to receive British tourists soon, ” she added.