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Travel to and from Guernsey is expected to swing back into life in the months ahead, with plans to re-open borders without any quarantine period on 1 July – while Jersey is yet to confirm the key travel dates in its ‘covid roadmap’.
Guernsey’s emergency decision-making authority yesterday announced that there will be no restrictions on inter-island travel within the ‘Bailiwick Bubble’ – Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm – from 22 March.
Five weeks later – from 30 April – non-essential travel from outside the Bailiwick will be allowed, although there will be additional measures depending on where the traveller comes from and how serious the prevalence of covid there.
The regions fall into four broad categories, based on increasing levels of prevalence. Travellers from a Category 4 region, for example, will be tested on arrival and on day 13 of a 14-day period of self-isolation. Anyone declining a test will need to self-isolate for 21 days.
Pictured: Travel restrictions could be relaxed in Guernsey and, in some cases, dropped completely on 30 April depending on the prevalence of the virus in other jurisdictions.
If all goes well, Bailiwick borders will re-open fully on 1 July, with no country or regional variations.
However, this will still be subject to the first phase of Guernsey’s vaccine programme having been delivered and the first doses within the second.
A single test at the border, or administered pre-travel, may still be needed, depending on Public Health concerns. However, islanders were warned “don’t go booking your holidays for early July just yet.”
Pictured: Guernsey's criteria that will decide how other countries and regions of the UK will be treated in the travel classification.
The announcements came days ahead of a key meeting in Jersey on Monday which will see the Government’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell – known as STAC – discuss how Jersey will reopen its borders and the boundaries of the traffic light system used to determine the covid risk of countries.
Those recommendations will then be passed along to Ministers, who will have the final say.
At the moment, every country is classified as ‘red’ in Jersey’s traffic light approach, which requires inbound passengers to isolate until they have had a negative PCR test 10 days after arriving.
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