International travellers to require negative Covid-19 test - your views

Intro

Airport testing

International travellers to require negative Covid-19 test, Scottish government announces

Ann Brown

This should have been done from the beginning together with enforced quarantine. Now it is effectively closing the stable door after the horse has, long ago, bolted.

Ian Buchanan

Shouldn’t be any flights coming into Edinburgh, the airports should be closed.

Marc Selvin

About time. Other countries have had this in place for months. Although for full effectiveness this needs to be combined with a test upon arrival, which I believe is available at a cost in England under “test & release”, avoiding the need for quarantine.

Jackie Hill

Disgusting they have waited so long to do this, should have been done from the start.

Helen Lee-Keenan

Horse and door and too little too late.

Anne Scott

I thought Edinburgh airport and Scottish airlines were to close because of border lockdown.

Michele Lynch

How are all these flights still coming in and now to have a clear Covid test? Why are there still so many people travelling to Edinburgh.

Martin Bunting

Why let them in? Close the airport's and borders, take a leaf out of what Australia and New Zealand done.

Leanne Hutchison

Waste of time unless England puts it in place too. People will just fly to England then drive/train up.

Willie Milne

We will never stop this. It should be nobody out and nobody in until the numbers go down.

Gillian Ramage

Far too late and why is it not now instead of next week?

Derry Delboy Livingstone

That’s not bad – nine month to come up with what should have been first on the list and easiest to think of.

Thorsten Schutte

Hang on, I thought we are on lockdown - you either do it properly or you don’t do it at all.

Angie Fair

Really took their time,,,and yes, does that include the Celtic team.

Sean McQueenie

Maybe they should have just banned international travel when it all started, and like the countries that did, Scotland and UK would probably be free of Covid instead of deep in trouble again.

Scott Robertson

It's a joke, stop travel full stop! So we are told not to work and stay at home, but we can still invite people in who can contract it here and spread it! Did our governments learn nothing the first time round?

Richard Ella

It’s a bit of a redundant and futile effort to implement this now, given the UK has some of the highest case rates in the world. Testing people arriving into the UK to hopefully identify the few with Covid seems futile when daily UK community transmission rates are more than 50,000. In Malaysia, imported cases are less than 0.5% of the daily cases and I don’t expect it will be much different in UK. It certainly makes sense to test everyone in arriving in your country if your country’s case count is virtually zero as overseas travellers represent the greatest risk.

Lee Birrell

If they’d have implanted this in February/ March last year, we wouldn’t have been in this situation now!

Peter Anderson

All I can say on that is better late than never, but l will never understand how it took so long.

Nick Safdar

For all those saying this should have been done months ago, how many countries “months ago” had the facilities to offer the PCR testing to the public before they travel?

Mac Sam

Should not just be international flights, should be all flights out of the UK. Yes I agree, one year too late is a joke! People are still going on holiday - absolute idiots!

Ian Patterson

Like everything else the UK government has done since January last year, common sense but too late.

Mary McRae

Will this mean that Brits coming back from future holidays will have to have the test as well and would you still have to have this if you’ve had the vaccine?

Mark Dougall

All we need now is a hard border at Berwick and then we're sorted.

Matty Plahay

Would it not be much better shutting the airport down?

Atholl Cunningham

Are they going to check on arrival that they have proof or are they going to rely on departing countries to check?