Lateral flow tests are available to UK residents free of charge up to twice a week and are currently used for mass testing in schools and workplaces.
Tour operators insist lateral flow tests should be deemed safe enough for travel if the government allows them for schools.
Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy agreed. He said: “They’re either good enough or they’re not. It’s not like the results are valid if you’re a schoolchild but not if you’re a holidaymaker. It either works or it doesn’t. So I don’t see what their differentiation is.”
The PC Agency’s Paul Charles pointed out that 16 million people have had both doses of the vaccine in the UK so far, which “covers all of the most vulnerable”.
He said lateral flow tests were the cause of “much government arguments”, with “the ‘health hawks’ saying they don’t want you to take them” but that the transport secretary “did suggest you could ‘bring your own bottle’, as he put it, [that] you could effectively bring your own NHS lateral flow test with you in a suitcase, take them whilst you’re abroad, and that would be good enough from a green country.”
So, do you think lateral flow tests are good enough to be used for travel?
