UK Gov’t Says Holidays Abroad Invite Further Lockdowns

Tourism companies that serve British travelers seeking holidays abroad are bracing for another summer of gloomy business following a government science adviser’s warning Saturday (March 20), Reuters reported.

“I think international travel this summer is, for the average holidaymaker, sadly I think, extremely unlikely,” Mike Tildesley, a professor of infectious disease modeling at the University of Warwick, told BBC Radio, Reuters reported.

Tildesley belongs to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modeling, which advises the British government, according to Reuters. He said the problem is the proliferation of new variants of COVID-19 around the world.

“We are running a real risk if we do start to have lots of people going overseas … because of the potential for bringing more of these new variants back into the country,” Tildesley said, per Reuters.

New official travel guidelines are scheduled for announcement April 12, Reuters reported. The threat of another lost tourism season comes in the wake of a recent report indicating that the U.K.’s economy in 2020 was in its worst shape since 1709.

That report, by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, put the company’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 2019 to 2020 at negative 9.9 percent.

In the United States, meanwhile, officials in a number of tourism hot spots — especially those catering to college students on spring break — reported widespread flouting of regulations meant to halt the virus’s spread.

The Associated Press reported that Miami Beach is considering extending an unusual 8 p.m. curfew after concluding an “unruly spring break crowd gathering by the thousands, fighting in the streets, destroying restaurant property and refusing to wear masks has become a serious threat to public safety.”

Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), CNN reported that about 12 percent of Floridians, and 13 percent of U.S. residents overall, have been vaccinated against COVID-19.