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Glasgow Live
Glasgow Live
National
Julie Delahaye & Sophie Buchan

Iceland scraps covid rules for tourists regardless of their vaccination status

The travel sector as we all know is slowly relaxing their rules when it comes to covid and tourists.

Countries such as France and Spain have ditched some of their requirements to cross the border which came as much-welcomed news to those going on holiday during the spring half term break.

And to add to the good news, Iceland has now announced that they are set to ditch all their travel rules - and it's not just for the fully vaccinated.

The news comes after England ditched their covid vaccine rules this week whilst Scotland announced that they would shortly follow suit.

This will be the first time since March 2020 that people who are not vaccinated will be allowed to travel to Iceland as its previous rules stated only those with a full course of the covid vaccine could gain entry, reports the Mirror.

But what does the change actually mean?

From today (February 25) tourists - regardless of their vaccine status - can travel without an 'essential' reason.

As all of their rules are being ditched, travellers will also be able to avoid taking a test, self-isolating and showing proof of vaccination.

Discussing the decision to ditch the rules, Minister of Health, Willum Þór Þórsson said: "We can truly rejoice at this turning-point, but nonetheless I encourage people to be careful, practice personal infection prevention measures and not to interact with others if they notice symptoms."

Steve Heapy, CEO of Jet2 - one of the biggest airlines in the UK- welcomed the news in a statement and added: "This is an enormous step towards normality for international travel as it represents a country saying that travel is back to how it looked before the pandemic.

"We applaud the Icelandic Government for leading the way when it comes to reopening international travel and we are confident that other nations will follow suit. We are already seeing very strong demand for flights and trips to Iceland and we expect that demand to step up even further following this extremely positive news."

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