tourists
Covaxin cleared by UK, relief for Indian students, tourists
China and India's Covid vaccines have been approved by the U.K. for travel into the country, clearing the way for tourists and foreign students who have been fully immunized with them to enter.
Immunizations from China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd., state-owned Sinopharm, and India's Bharat Biotech International Ltd. have joined the list that the U.K. uses to grant entry with proof of full vaccination, according to a notice issued by the Department for Transport and Department of Health and Social Care on Monday, reports NDTV.
Read: Serum Institute of India to start Covishield supply to COVAX countries
Now all seven Covid shots that have received emergency backing from the World Health Organization will be recognized by the U.K., including India's Covaxin, which got the agency's nod in early November. The U.K. is following Australia, which last month expanded the number of shots it recognizes, and the U.S., which said it would accept all WHO-approved vaccines when it opened its borders to foreign travelers this month.
The U.K. decision should allow tens of thousands of Chinese students given home-grown shots to attend school there. Universities have received record numbers of undergraduate applications from Chinese nationals, according to an October report released by UCAS, a U.K. universities admission service provider. Sinovac and Sinopharm shots are the most widely used in China, which has vaccinated more than 80% of its 1.4 billion population.
Read:UK rules recognising Covaxin for inbound travel come into effect from today
China accounts for the majority of foreign students in the U.K., and their families contribute significant revenue to universities there every year, data from U.K.'s Higher Education Statistics Agency shows. More than 4,500 Chinese students applied for undergraduate admission to colleges and universities in the U.K. this year, an increase of about one-third since the global Covid-19 pandemic began.
Visitors to the U.K. who are not fully vaccinated are required to get Covid tests and quarantine for 10 days.
India opens to vaccinated foreign tourists after 18 months
India began allowing fully vaccinated foreign tourists to enter the country on regular commercial flights on Monday, in the latest easing of coronavirus restrictions as infections fall and vaccinations rise.
Tourists entering India must be fully vaccinated, follow all COVID-19 protocols and test negative for the virus within 72 hours of their flight, according to the health ministry. Many will also need to undergo a post-arrival COVID-19 test at the airport.
However, travelers from countries which have agreements with India for mutual recognition of vaccination certificates, such as the U.S., U.K. and many European nations, can leave the airport without undergoing a COVID-19 test.
This is the first time India has allowed foreign tourists on commercial flights to enter the country since March 2020, when it imposed one of the toughest lockdowns in the world in an attempt to contain the pandemic. Fully vaccinated tourists on chartered flights were allowed to enter starting last month.
Read: Veteran politician Sharad Pawar ruling BJP's choice for next Indian President?
It comes as coronavirus infections have fallen significantly, with daily new cases hovering at just above 10,000 for over a month.
To encourage travelers to visit India, the government plans to issue 500,000 free visas through next March. The moves are expected to boost the tourism and hospitality sector which was battered by the pandemic.
With more than 35 million reported coronavirus infections, India is the second-worst-hit country after the U.S. Active coronavirus cases stand at 134,096, the lowest in 17 months, according to the health ministry.
Nearly 79% of India’s adult population has received at least one vaccine dose while 38% is fully vaccinated. The federal government has asked state administrations to conduct door-to-door campaigns to accelerate the vaccine campaign.
Read: India At COP26 Says Its Solar Energy Capacity Increased 17 Times In 7 Years
Fewer than 3 million foreign tourists visited India in 2020, a drop of more than 75% from 2019, when tourism brought nearly $30 billion in earnings.
Tourists stranded in Cox’s Bazar moved out to Chattogram: Police
Some 288 tourists, who were stranded in the beach town of Cox's Bazar due to the ongoing transport strike, have been moved out to Chattogram with the help of the district police.
Acting Superintendent of Police Rafiqul Islam said they sent 288 tourists to Chattogram by police buses on Saturday and Sunday without charging any fare.
Most of the tourists came to Cox's Bazar on the weekend and those who were scheduled to leave Cox’s Bazar on Friday and Saturday faced sufferings as the long-haul buses did not operate due to the strike, Rafiqul Islam said.
Read: Tourist ship operations suspended on Teknaf-Saint Martin's Island route
Tourists have been requested to contact the district police lines for any kind of help, he added.
Deputy Commissioner of Cox's Bazar Mamunur Rashid, who is also the chairman of Beach Management Committee, said, “Transport strike is a national issue. We expect a quick solution from the government in this regard. We’ll take steps if the tourists seek any assistance.”
General Secretary of the Federation of Tourism Owners’ Association of Bangladesh Abul Kashem Shikder said the businesses related to tourism are also being affected due to the sudden transport strike.
There are now 15,000-20,000 tourists in Cox’s as the flow of tourists has declined due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
Amid this grim situation, hoteliers have offered a 30 percent discount on hotel rents, he said.
Shikder said the situation had started changing and then came the transport strike dealing a severe blow to the business.
Superintendent of Cox's Bazar Tourist Police Mohammad Zillur Rahman said there are no stuck tourists now in Cox’s Bazar. Those who want to go back arrangements are being made for their return by the district police, he added.
Transporters went on an indefinite strike from Friday morning in protest against the recent fuel price hike, causing sufferings to commuters and inter-district passengers.
300 tourists stranded on St Martin's Island due to rough weather
Some 300 tourists have got stranded on St Martin's Island in the Bay of Bengal due to inclement weather.
The authorities concerned have suspended the movement of passenger vessels between Teknaf and St Martin's Island from Sunday afternoon.
READ: Cyclone Yaas: Unusual tides destroy Saint Martin's jetty
Nur Ahmed, chairman of St Martin's Island union, said “The tourists got stranded due to suspension of the trawler movement and all the tourists on the island are safe. We have informed the local administration about it.”
Mohammad Pervez Chowdhury, Teknaf Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO), said the tourists can return to their respective destinations after the weather improves.
READ: Visit Saint Martin, Coral Island, Bangladesh: Piece of Paradise on Bay of Bengal
999 call: 7 tourists stuck on boat in Kaptai Lake rescued after hours
Police rescued seven tourists, including women and children, as they got stuck in an engine boat in the Kaptai Lake on Thursday night after they had made a call to the national emergency service number 999.
Sanzid Ahmed, a resident of Dhaka, along with families and friends went to visit Rangamati and the Kaptai Lake in an engine boat on Thursday.
Read: 999 call: TCB goods recovered from AL leader’s house
The boat got stuck in a swarm of water hyacinths near Balukhali and the propeller of the boat’s engine broke as the boatman repeatedly tried to restart it.
Stuck in the middle of the lake for hours, Sanzid called on the helpline number 999 around 1:30 pm requesting for their rescue.
Following the call, a request for a speedy rescue of the tourists was made to the naval police control room and Rangamati sadar naval police outpost.
Then, a team, led by in-charge Inspector of Rangamati naval police Rusel Mia and assistant sub-inspector Nazmul, started a rescue operation.
Read: 999 call: 2 arrested after woman raped on truck
After a few hours of their efforts, the tourist group was safely rescued from the boat.
On September 7, another tourist group of eight people were rescued from the Kaptai Lake after they had sought help through the national emergency service number.
Saudi Arabia will reopen to tourists on Sunday
Saudi Arabia will reopen its borders to tourists on Sunday for the first time in 18 months after imposing restrictions at the start of the pandemic to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The historically closed-off kingdom introduced electronic visas for tourists in late 2019, just before the pandemic struck.
Saudi Arabia is looking to rebrand itself as a unique tourist destination for nature lovers and curious travelers as a way to boost non-oil revenue and create more jobs.
Also read: 2021 Hajj: Registrations limited to Saudi citizens, residents
Citizens of 49 mostly European countries, as well as the U.S. and China among others, will be allowed to enter the kingdom under the new rules without quarantine if they provide a negative PCR test before travel and have vaccine certificates proving two doses of the Oxford/Astra Zeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or a single dose of the vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson.
Travelers vaccinated with the Chinese Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccine must have received a third dose of one of the other vaccines.
Earlier this week, the kingdom warned that any citizen who travels to red-listed countries, such as the neighboring emirate of Dubai where the delta variant is present, could face a three-year travel ban.
Europe tells tourists: Welcome back! Now work out the rules
Europe is opening up to Americans and other visitors after more than a year of COVID-induced restrictions, in hope of luring back tourists — and their dollars — to the continent’s trattorias, vistas and cultural treasures. But travelers will need patience to figure out who’s allowed into which country, how and when.
As the European Union’s doors reopen one by one to the outside world for the first time since March 2020, tourists will discover a patchwork of systems instead of a single border-free leisure zone, because national governments have resisted surrendering control over their frontiers amid the pandemic. And post-Brexit Britain is going its own way altogether.
Meanwhile, the welcoming mood isn’t always mutual. U.S. borders, for example, remain largely closed to non-Americans.
Here’s a look at current entry rules in some popular European tourist destinations. One caveat: While these are the regulations as written by governments, travelers may meet hiccups as airlines or railway officials try to make sense of them.
FRANCE
If you’re vaccinated, come to France. But only if you got one of the four EU-approved vaccines: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. That works for Americans — as long as they can produce official proof of vaccination — but not for large swaths of the world like China and Russia where other vaccines are used.
France’s borders officially reopened Wednesday. Vaccinated visitors from outside Europe and a few “green” countries will still be asked for a negative PCR test no older than 72 hours, or a negative antigen test of no more than 48 hours. Unvaccinated children will be allowed in with vaccinated adults, but will have to show a negative test from age 11.
Tourists are banned from 16 countries wrestling with virus surges and worrisome variants that are on a red list that includes India, South Africa and Brazil.
Non-vaccinated visitors from “orange list” countries — including the U.S. and Britain — can’t come for tourism either, only for specific, imperative reasons.
Also read: Eyeing variant, France mulls tighter limits for UK tourists
ITALY
Americans — the second-biggest group of foreign tourists to Italy — have been welcome since mid-May. However, they need to self-isolate upon arrival for 10 days unless they arrive on so-called “COVID-tested flights.” That means passengers are tested before and after the flight and must fill out documents about their whereabouts to facilitate contact tracing if required.
“COVID-tested” flights from the U.S. started in December and have also been operating since May from Canada, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
Italy also started allowing tourists from Britain and Israel last month, meaning they no longer need an “essential” reason to visit and don’t have to self-isolate, providing they present proof of a negative COVID test taken no more than 48 hours prior to arrival.
The same rules apply to travelers from EU countries and those on “COVID-tested” flights from the U.S., Canada, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
GREECE
Tourism-reliant Greece started opening to American travelers back in April, and now visitors from China, Britain and 20 other countries are also allowed to visit for nonessential travel.
All must provide a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test and fill in a passenger locator form on their plans in Greece. This directive expires on June 14, but could be extended.
Athens long pressed for a common EU approach, but didn’t wait for one to materialize. On June 1, Greece, Germany and five other bloc members introduced a COVID certificate system for travelers, weeks ahead of the July 1 rollout of the program across the 27-nation bloc.
SPAIN
Spain kicked off its summer tourism season Monday by welcoming vaccinated visitors from the U.S. and most countries, as well as European visitors who can prove they are not infected.
Americans and most other non-Europeans need an official vaccine certificate by a health authority. Spain accepts those who were inoculated with the four EU-approved vaccines as well two Chinese vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization — as long as visitors are fully vaccinated at least two weeks before the trip.
Arrivals from Brazil, South Africa and India are banned at the moment because of high infection rates there, and non-vaccinated Americans and many other non-EU nationalities cannot come to Spain for tourism for now.
Also read: Int'l tourist arrivals fall 87% in Jan: UNWTO
But there are exemptions for countries considered at low risk, such as citizens from Britain, who can arrive without any health documents at all. EU citizens need to provide proof of vaccination, a certificate showing they recently recovered from COVID-19, or a negative antigen or PCR test taken within 48 hours of arrival.
BRITAIN
There are few, if any, American tourists in the U.K. at present. Britain has a traffic-light system for assessing countries by risk, and the U.S. along with most European nations is on the “amber” list, meaning everyone arriving has to self-isolate at home or in the place they are staying for 10 days.
U.K. and U.S. airlines and airport operators are pushing for a travel corridor to allow tourism to resume, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to raise the issue when he meets President Joe Biden at a G-7 summit in England this week.
Meanwhile, anyone traveling between Britain and continental Europe, be warned: In addition to the isolation requirement for those arriving or returning to U.K. shores, rising concern about the delta variant of the virus has prompted some other countries to introduce special restrictions for those arriving from Britain.
EUROPEAN UNION
The 27-nation EU has no unified COVID tourism or border policy, but has been working for months on a joint digital travel certificate for those vaccinated, freshly tested, or recently recovered from the virus. EU lawmakers endorsed the plan Wednesday.
The free certificates, which will contain a QR code with advanced security features, will allow people to move between European countries without having to quarantine or undergo extra coronavirus tests upon arrival.
Several EU countries have already begun using the system, including Spain, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland. The rest are expected to start using it July 1.
It’s mainly meant for EU citizens but Americans and others can obtain the certificate too — if they can convince authorities in an EU country they’re entering that they qualify for one. And the lack of an official U.S. vaccination certification system may complicate matters.
Eyeing variant, France mulls tighter limits for UK tourists
France may introduce stricter coronavirus restrictions for British visitors when tourism reopens this summer to prevent the spread of a worrying virus variant first detected in India and causing concern in Britain, authorities said Sunday.
The possibility of tighter restrictions for British tourists was raised Sunday by Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The minister suggested that Britain could be put in a health category of its own, somewhere in between the strictest measures that France is imposing on visitors from India and 15 other countries, and more relaxed requirements being readied for visitors from the European Union and some other countries.
Without giving specifics, Le Drian said “health measures that are a bit stronger” could be applied for British tourists.
The minister indicated that the government in Paris is watching how the situation develops before making up its mind.
Read:Clinic helps long-haul patients in London’s “COVID triangle”
“We hope that the variant can be controlled in a country which experienced real failures during the pandemic,” he said.
“However, the arrival of the Indian variant and the increase of cases of Indian variant in the United Kingdom pose a problem and so we are vigilant about this (and) in contact with the British authorities,” he added.
“It won’t be the red treatment if we have to do it. It will be an intermediate treatment,” the minister said. “But it is not excluded — this springs to mind because of British tourists — that we have health measures that are a bit stronger.”
From Sunday, Germany already started requiring people arriving from the U.K. to go into quarantine for 14 days. The decision announced last Friday responded to the spread in Britain of the Indian variant.
Under the tighter rules, airlines and others will also only be able to transport German citizens and residents from Britain.
Cox's Bazar falls silent as restrictions on tourists kick in
Tourist spots and recreational centres at Cox's Bazar including the beach, have fallen silent as a result of the closure of all tourist attractions in the face of the second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak.
No tourists who are already there are allowed to enter the beach. The beach shops were also closed due to lack of tourists.
However, hotels, motels, guest houses, restaurants and shopping malls have been kept open on the condition of complying with hygiene rules. Tourists staying in Cox's Bazar have also started returning.
Cox's Bazar Deputy Commissioner and President of the District Corona Infection Prevention Committee Md. Mamunur Rashid said a directive from the tourism ministry reached the district administration on Thursday (April 1st) regarding closure of tourist spots.
Also read: Tourism suspended in Sundarbans till Apr 15
According to the directive, all tourist spots and entertainment centers including Cox's Bazar beach would be closed till April 14.
The district administration, tourist police and other concerned people would take actions as per the instructions of the government.
Tourists were not allowed to enter the beach after receiving instructions from the ministry, said Mamunur.
Besides, all kinds of tourism related businesses including beach recreation umbrellas (kitkats), beach-bikes and jetskis had been shut down. The patrol of the tourist police had been intensified to keep a watch on the tourist centers including the beaches, concluded the Deputy Commissioner.
Nur Mohammad Rabbi, manager of Seagull Hotel said that advance room bookings at hotel, motels were being canceled due to the ban imposed on tourism.
Also read: Covid 19: Movement of tourist ships on Teknaf-St Martin's route suspended
Assistant Superintendent of Tourist Police Cox's Bazar Zone Chowdhury Mizanuzzaman said no one was allowed to enter the beach. Besides, all the shops near the beach had been closed.
Cox's Bazar Additional Deputy Commissioner Md Amin Al Parvez said, "A temporary shutdown has been declared to prevent public gatherings. Tourist spots, including the beach, will be reopened if the Corona situation returns to normal."
Earlier on April 1, the Cox's Bazar district administration had announced closure of all recreational centres in the district including the sea beach until April 14.
Moreover, the movement of tourist ships from Cox's Bazar to St.Martin's Island would also remain suspended during this period.
62.2pc tourists prefer staying in hotel amid pandemic: Survey
Around 62.2 percent of domestic tourists prefer staying in hotels to enjoy vacation amid the Coronavirus pandemic, according to an online survey conducted by premier travel and tourism publication.
But 40 percent of visitors do not consider staying in hotels, unless an effective vaccine is available in the market, while 28.9 percent say they may consider staying in hotels after the next three months, the survey revealed.
Bangladesh, like most countries in the world, had enforced a shutdown to curb the spread of Covid-19. The closure brought economic activities to a screeching halt and put millions of people out of job.
Tourism, like other sectors, was hit hard. As restrictions were eased, people started visiting various tourist sites but the government has been warning of a possible second wave of coronavirus in the winter months. With a vaccine still unavailable, another shutdown to curb virus spread would be a devastating blow to the economy.
The online survey was conducted on October 1 and October 25 where 2,148 respondents from different genders, professions and ages participated.
Kazi Wahidul Alam, Editor of The Bangladesh Monitor, disclosed the survey results at a webinar on Thursday.
Amid the ongoing pandemic, 40 percent respondents feel that health and hygiene protocols, maintained by the Bangladeshi hotels are not satisfactory, 37.8 percent consider those quite good, while 22.2 percent are not worried about it.
Also read: Sundarbans reopens to tourists after 7 months