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Govt. permits UK tourists soon after new UK variant

18 Feb 2021

  • UK variant entered SL despite ban: Health authorities

  The travel restriction placed on inbound travel to Sri Lanka originating from the UK was lifted with immediate effect yesterday (17) by the Sri Lankan Government, despite a new Covid-19 variant with worrying mutations being reported in the UK on 15 February. The restrictions imposed on travel from the UK on 23 December 2020, alongside a number of other countries, was due to the identification of the UK variant B.1.1.7 of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially dangerous with high transmissibility. However, despite the ban on travel from the UK, the variant was detected in Sri Lanka on 12 February amongst 16 individuals in the island. The new variant reported in the UK, which is known as B1525, has been detected by conducting genome sequencing in 10 countries including Denmark, the US, and Australia. Foreign media reported that 38 cases of this variant have been detected in the UK so far. The variant is reported to contain a mutation in a protein that plays an important role in helping the virus to enter cells. Speaking to The Morning yesterday, Deputy Director General of Health Services Dr. Hemantha Herath said that in a setting where Sri Lanka has opened its borders to travel from other countries, continuing to ban travel only from the UK is purposeless. “New variants can come from any country and the virus goes through new mutations every day. So, there is no point in just blocking travel from the UK. Even while we had the ban, the UK variant B.1.1.7 entered Sri Lanka through other countries.” The decision to relax travel restrictions from the UK was taken at a meeting presided by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Travellers will be subject to 14 days of quarantine in a complex designated to those who arrive from the UK and will have to undergo PCR tests as determined by health authorities. “Those who come from the UK will be subjected to 14 days of quarantine separately and will not be held in the same premises as others undergoing quarantine,” Dr. Herath said.  However, Dr. Herath mentioned that apart from requests made by the tourism industry to relax travel restrictions, authorities also had strong requests made by doctors who had travelled to the UK for medical training and were unable to return to the country. Tourist arrivals from the UK too will resume under the guidelines introduced by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB). After the pandemic-related airport closures, tourists arrived in the country on 28 December 2020 under a pilot project to restart tourism in the country, and Sri Lanka reopened airports for commercial flights on 21 January 2021.


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