Sharjah24 – AFP: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday confirmed restaurants could reopen to serve outdoors in a week's time, as Covid restrictions are lifted, but sounded a note of caution on international travel resuming.
Speaking at a televised press conference, Johnson said criteria for moving forward with a second phase of easing coronavirus restrictions in England had been met.
From April 12, non-essential retail, gyms, hairdressers and outdoor hospitality will reopen in England, Johnson confirmed.
However the prime minister gave little information on the resumption of non-essential international travel from Britain despite massive pent-up demand for summer holidays abroad.
Johnson said he was "hopeful" but would not commit to a tentative May 17 deadline to restart trips, saying Britain should not "underestimate the difficulties that we're seeing in some of the destination countries".
The government's Global Travel Task Force is to announce more detail on the UK's travel roadmap this week, after the UK unveiled a "traffic-light" system for testing or quarantine after travel to different nations over the weekend.
London has also announced it will allow a number of people to attend public events such as football matches from this month in trials of a virus certification system.
- 'Virus passports'? -
But Johnson refused to be drawn on whether Britain will issue "virus passports" for all international travel or as a blanket tool for attending events or accessing services, an idea backed by many tourism-dependent countries and airlines but opposed by more than 70 UK MPs.
The prime minister said there was "absolutely no question" of people being asked to provide Covid certification to go to shops or restaurants in seven days, but left the door open to vaccination passes being used for travel in future.
Passes were "something that all countries are looking at" and "I do think that's going to be part of the way people deal with it" Johnson said.
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