UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acknowledged that the UK aviation industry, the third biggest aviation industry in the world, was currently having “a terrible terrible time”, adding that he sympathised with all those working in the industry.
However, he refused to say whether he would back new proposals to cut the quarantine for people arriving in the UK from high-risk countries, which would enable the industry to begin recovery.
The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and Health Secretary Matt Hancock are jointly chairing a taskforce set up to examine ways to reduce the quarantine.
Mr Johnson said that one of the benefits of the country ramping up its Covid PCR testing capacity to 500,000 a day was that there are ‘new possibilities for testing of all kinds across the country’.
However, he did not say if he supported reducing quarantine times for those who test negative, saying only: “We will be bringing forward new measures and new proposals just as soon as they are finalised.”
