Travel changes for fully vaccinated Brits announced

Today, the government announced that from July 19, fully vaccinated UK citizens and the under 18’s will be able to return to the UK from amber list countries without the need to quarantine for 10 days. They will still need to take a PCR test on arrival before day 2, but they no longer need to take the day 8 test. So, for fully vaccinated travellers and under 18’s, the amber list has now effectively gone green.

Crucially, the government will also be revising its guidance that travel to amber list countries should only be for essential reasons. That change will also take effect from July 19.

This is all very good news for the travel industry, as most countries are currently on the amber list and we’ve already seen that moving a country from amber to green drives a huge surge in bookings. With 65% of UK adults fully vaccinated, and under 18s making up another 21% of the population, 72% of the UK population will be able to treat amber list countries as if they were green from July 19.

Of course, it is not quite that good when you look at the demographics in a bit more detail. The very young and the very old do not travel much. The highest propensities to travel by air are in the 20 to 64 age range overall. Business travel, as you might expect, is more concentrated in the middle years, with leisure having more of a bimodal distribution amongst both younger and older people.

*Source: CAA international passenger survey 2019, ONS population estimates for 2019, GridPoint analysis*

The UK vaccination programme has proceeded fairly strictly in age order. The following chart shows the vaccination status by age group for England, as at July 4, as a proportion of the population. Whilst further vaccinations will of course take place by July 19, “fully vaccinated” means having had your final dose at least 14 days ago, so this is a pretty good guide for who will have that status on the 19th.

*Source: National Immunisation Management Service (NIMS), ONS population data, GridPoint analysis*

So whilst 72% of the population will be exempt from quarantine, when weighted by propensity to travel, I calculate that the exemption will cover 56% of business and 61% of leisure trips. In terms of overall trips, that averages out at 60%.

That is still a massive step forward for the industry and the proportion will only increase as time goes by. Once everyone who has already received one dose becomes “fully vaccinated”, the proportion of UK air travellers that will be exempt will rise to 84%. This figure is the same for both leisure and business passengers.

With the gap between first and second doses now set at 8 weeks in the UK, we should get to that level by mid September. Initially, the exemption will only apply to UK citizens, but it sounded to me like Grant Shapps was confident of adding the EU and USA before too long.

New testing statistics

As well as the high profile announcement on exemptions for fully immunised passengers, the government also released a new set of data from the arrivals testing programme. For the first time, the overall statistics on the number of people commencing home or hotel quarantine include those who have booked private test packages, which now make up most of the volume. This gives us to see a nice set of weekly travel volume data for amber and red list countries. It won’t include travellers from green list countries, but we know the volumes there are very small.

*Source: NHS Test and Trace statistics, July 8, Table 19*

The “Table 21” figures which split the testing data down by country have also been updated. This only happens every three weeks and this data will inform the next revision of “traffic light” classifications, due on July 15. This is the first time that the data have been published in advance of the decisions about which countries will change classification. Before I get into the increasingly popular national pastime of trying to guess what may change status, let’s look at what other interesting things are revealed by the new data.

Arrivals volumes by country

The Table 21 data enables us to look at arrivals volumes by country, albeit only in three-week blocks. In the next chart, I’ve shown the biggest arrivals volumes over the most recent three-week period ending June 30.

It is looking a lot more like a “normal” summer market, at least in terms of which countries are now accounting for most travel volume. The overall volumes are still way below normal levels, of course. But it does suggest to me that the government’s guidance that only “essential travel” should take place to amber list countries has been ignored by a lot of people.

With the border still closed for UK travellers to the US, it is quite striking that this market has now climbed to number three by overall volume, presumably based only on US citizens travelling to the UK and despite the quarantine requirement.

I’ve also shown the percentage of travellers that tested positive for COVID after arrival. This is despite getting a negative pre-departure test, remember. With the exception of India at 1.2% (red) and Israel at 0.1% (green), there isn’t much obvious correlation between this metric and the risk classifications. I’ll come back to that later.

How have the overall test statistics moved?

Here are the overall test statistics for the three-week period ending June 30, broken down by country classification. We still have a large category of “unknown”. Apparently, it is still being investigated as to whether this category relates to travellers at all. Hopefully, we will get clarity at some point as I remain very confused by the size of this category.

Overall test positivity was reported as 0.5% for the three-week period ending June 9. The new figures for the following three-week period ending June 30 show test positivity increasing marginally to 0.6%. However, the figures for the previous period have also been retrospectively revised upwards to 0.6% in the new data, so I’m going to call this a wash.

What about sequencing volumes?

In terms of sequencing, the total number of positive samples successfully sequenced for the period ending June 9 was previously reported as 250. Those figures have been revised upwards to 347, with most of the increase in amber list countries. However, that still means that only 9% of positive test results for amber routes are known to have been sequenced. Some of that will be down to small numbers being suppressed in the government data, but even allowing for a reasonable estimate for this, I still only get to 16%.

We know that only day two tests are eligible for sequencing. Day two tests accounted for 42% of all “quarantine at home” tests in the period, so I’d expect something similar in terms of the split of positive test results, unless the positive results are very biased towards day 8 or “test to release” results at day 5. So I am left with a gap between 16% and 42% which I can’t explain, given that the government continues to insist that all day two positive tests are sequenced.

In any event, the figures for sequencing volumes didn’t improve in the three weeks to June 30, with only 3% of amber list positive test results being sequenced, according to the Table 21 data. There has also been a drop-off in reported sequencing rates for red list routes, down from 40% to 13%. Maybe all these figures will be revised upwards in later data releases, but the rationale for insisting on day two PCR results in the name of sequencing still looks incredibly thin, given the low volumes of results being sequenced compared to the cost of requiring PCR tests for everyone.

An alternative policy of using lateral flow tests and only sending positive results for confirmatory PCR and sequencing looks like a much more cost effective solution. Hopefully this will be considered when the overall system is reviewed on July 31, at least for amber and green list countries.

Any clues for classification changes?

This has already been a long post, so I won’t go into all the other parameters which are considered when making decisions for moving countries between the green, amber and red lists. But I will just flag what the positivity rates for UK arrivals testing might suggest as candidates for moving between the lists.

Here are the amber list countries with the highest test positivity rates during the three weeks to June 30. These might get attention for possible move to red.

Could we get moves from red to amber? Here are the red list countries with the lowest test positivity rates. The countries marked with an asterisk all had the figures for positive cases suppressed because they were less than three. So I’ve worked out their rates assuming these figures were in fact two - so it is a worst case.

Likewise, there are quite a few amber list countries with very low test positivity rates in the arrivals testing data. There are of course many other considerations for getting moved to green, but at least on basis of this data, these are the ones most deserving of consideration. Again the countries marked with an asterisk had the data for the number of positive tests suppressed, so this is a worst-case estimate.

The beginning of better times?

Today’s announcement was a rare piece of good news for the travel industry. With a further review of country classifications due in a week, perhaps we will see a number of additional countries moved to the green list too. The data has supported that for a while.

At the end of the month, the whole system is up for review and the biggest target for change must be the dropping of arrivals PCR tests, or their replacement by lower-cost lateral flow tests, at least for green and amber list countries. Maybe we will also get positive news soon on the reopening of the US border.

Now, I know this all sounds hopelessly optimistic. But last night England made it to the final of a major international football competition for the first time since 1966. So, just for today, I’m going to allow myself to dream.

Travel freedom for fully vaccinated Brits and more testing data published