UK Lifts Travel Restrictions for Entry of Fully Vaccinated

Travel guidelines for entry into the United Kingdom are due to change on Monday 11th October at 4:00am. Fully vaccinated persons travelling from St. Lucia to the United Kingdom will now be allowed easier quarantine and testing requirements. This week, the Government of the United Kingdom released revised entry guidelines for travel from 50 countries and persons travelling from St. Lucia will benefit from these changes.

The UK describes a fully vaccinated person as someone who has received all required doses of an approved vaccine namely, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, Janssen, AstraZeneca Covishield, AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Moderna Takeda. The vaccination process must be completed at least 14 days prior to arrival in the United Kingdom. In St. Lucia, only the AstraZeneca, and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines have been administered thus far. This vaccination policy applies in all cases, even if you’ve recently recovered from COVID-19 and have natural immunity the new guidelines stated.

As part of the new guidelines, a fully vaccinated person must, before travelling to the UK:

• book and pay for a day 2 COVID-19 test – to be taken after arrival in England
• complete a passenger locator form – to be completed in the 48 hours before you arrive in England
• You will need to enter your COVID-19 test booking reference number on your passenger locator form.

Upon arrival into the UK, a fully vaccinated person must take a COVID-19 test on or before day 2. This test must be booked before travel to the country.

Non-vaccinated persons, described as anyone who does not meet the criteria above, must:

• take a COVID-19 test – to be taken in the 3 days before you travel to England
• book and pay for day 2 and day 8 COVID-19 tests – to be taken after arrival in England
• complete a passenger locator form – to be completed in the 48 hours before you arrive in England

Upon arrival in the UK, a non-vaccinated person is required to:

• quarantine at home or in the place they are staying for 10 days
• take a pre-booked COVID-19 test on or before day 2 and on or after day 8 – these tests must be booked before travel.
• If you are in England for less than 10 days, you need to quarantine for the time you are here. You need to book day 2 and day 8 travel tests. You only need to take the tests if you are still in England on those days.

Full guidelines can be found here.