Over the past few weeks, several countries have relaxed their travel restrictions to allow entry for vaccinated international travellers, where many of them previously banned South Africa from entering.
The most recent countries to open up are the United Arab Emirates, France, Spain, and Switzerland. Earlier, Austria and Germany also opened their borders.
The United Arab Emirates has opened their borders to all vaccinated travellers.
Until now, South Africans were only allowed to transit in the UAE on flights operated by Emirates Airlines.
Meanwhile a petition calling for the UK to remove SA from its red list has garnered more than 10,000 signatures in less than a week. After a two-week waiting period, the UK government responded and had the following to say:
‘We will not compromise on the progress we have made on our vaccine programme by allowing people to freely mix abroad and return or travel to the UK without proper checks and procedures,’ the UK’s Department for Transport said in response to the petition.
‘At the most recent review on 4 August, it was decided that South Africa would remain on the ‘red list’ as South Africa continues to present a high public health risk to the UK from known variants of concern,’ authorities said.
Picture: Unsplash
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