PARIS: Global airline body IATA stepped up its pressure on governments to ease travel restrictions on Wednesday, pointing to UK testing data that showed low incidence of Covid-19 in arriving passengers.
"These data tell us we can do better," IATA Director General Willie Walsh said, citing a 2.2 per cent positive rate among 365,895 tests carried out in February-May, according to Britain's National Health Service.
"Universal restrictions on people are no longer needed," Walsh added.
Excluding passengers arriving from countries on Britain's higher-risk red list, the positive rate fell to 1.46 per cent, according to the data cited by the International Air Transport Association.
Most international air travel remains depressed almost 18 months into the pandemic because of continuing restrictions.
Walsh, who took the top job at IATA in April, said last month that governments were being too risk-averse and needed to change rules to reflect data showing that vaccinated travel or travel with testing poses little risk to a country's infection rate.
"The crisis in the airline industry, which was initially caused by a health pandemic, is now really a crisis caused by restrictions being imposed by government," Walsh had said.
He had singled out Britain in particular, citing rules that require people entering the UK from nearly all countries to take at least two coronavirus tests and enter quarantine. Walsh also hit out at what he said was "incredible farcical confusion" created by mixed political messages on travel.
Many countries on Britain's "amber list" for medium-risk travel have very, very low transmission rates, said Walsh.
"If I was vaccinated, I wouldn't hesitate to fly to these countries," he said of places such as the United States, Spain, France and Italy, which were top destinations for Britons before the pandemic." Reuters
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