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What will a vaccine mean for our holidays?

Airport Covid-19 temperature checks would be a thing of the past - Getty
Airport Covid-19 temperature checks would be a thing of the past - Getty

This week, Oxford University said a jab could still be ready before Christmas if enough people enrolled in trials in the next few weeks.

More conservative estimates suggest widespread vaccination across the UK won’t take place until 2021. But if and when it does, and assuming there isn’t a large enough faction of anti-vaxxers refusing the jab, this will be the moment when life finally gets back to normal.

Professor Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia said "overnight all the restrictions can stop and life will return to normal like it was before March". This means we can remove those perspex screens from our pubs, peel off the arrows from the supermarket floors, hug our grannies, and get back to our pre-pandemic lives.

But will a vaccine necessarily mean our holidays can get back to normal? Dr Richard Dawood, a travel health specialist, told Telegraph Travel: “It’s interesting to speculate. A safe effective vaccine would certainly give peace of mind to anyone travelling.

“Could countries use this as a condition of entry, to protect themselves from imported disease? That would require having a widely available, robust vaccine. In an ideal world, that would be coordinated via the World Health Organisation, via a change in International Health Regulations and creation of an international certificate of vaccination.”

Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine
Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine

Many countries require proof of vaccination for anyone arriving in the country. With yellow fever, for example, 17 African countries will deny entry if you do not have a certificate showing immunisation. It is possible that a similar system could exist for a Covid-19 vaccine – punishing those who refuse vaccination but still want to go on holiday.

“However, it would also be possible for individual countries to ‘go it alone’ and come up with their own rules – in the same way that some are now requiring testing prior to departure or on arrival – perhaps adding layers of complexity to entry and exit regulations.”

In some parts of the world, like North Cyprus, proof of a negative Covid-19 test is a pre-requisite for getting in. UK nationals must present a test result taken in the previous 72 hours, and go into quarantine for 14 days at their own expense on arrival. One thing a vaccine would mean, we can presume, is no more tests at airports so long as you have a certificate to prove you've had the jab, and no more quarantine on arrival.

If the vaccine is not rolled out globally, but rather only within certain countries, there would exist an enduring possibility of a further outbreak of the virus in your destination. So while you would no longer be at risk of contracting Covid-19 on holiday, the risk of getting stranded at that destination due to cancelled flights and a further lockdown would still exist. This could mean travel insurance rates remain high, despite a vaccine.

So what will a vaccine mean for air travel? Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, said: “We don’t expect to get anywhere close to normal until there’s a vaccine that’s been widely distributed to a large portion of the population.

“Once we get past a vaccine and it’s widely distributed we’ll quickly recover back towards 100 percent,” he said in a TV interview on CNBC.

While a vaccine might mean airlines can ramp up their schedules as consumer confidence rises, as well as restart in-flight services and move away from compulsory face mask measures, we will likely still see airports and airlines continue to reduce the number of “touchpoints” during the flying experience. Already, airports are moving towards a touch-free journey from arrival at the airport to take-off, with self check-in and facial recognition technology replacing ID checks becoming the norm.

The in-flight magazine is one element of the flying experience which could face an uncertain future. Nearly all airlines have removed in-flight magazines, since the pandemic. High Life, British Airways’ magazine, is now only distributed in lounges and by email, with staff cuts hinting at a tumultuous period ahead.

Ink London, the world’s biggest publisher of in-flight magazines, has cut around half its staff. But the joint CEO Michael Keating remains bullish.

“It’s absolutely not the end of in-flight magazines,” he told the Financial Times. “We’re looking at interim ways to serve clients across all formats, and developing existing channels like our new websites for easyJet and American Airlines, but all our existing clients still want a print product, and so do we.”

We could also see behaviours developed during Covid-19 enduring after a widespread vaccine is available. Having invested in face coverings during the pandemic, and having grown accustomed to wearing them while travelling, passengers may decide to wear them in airports and on-board planes to avoid the risk of catching any other viruses.

Face mask coverings have been widely used in parts of Asia for decades – the first were rolled out during the devastating Manchurian pneumonic plague in Northern China in 1910, which had a 100 per cent mortality rate. They have since become commonplace, whether to avoid spreading diseases or to avoid the effects of air pollution. However, following the SARS outbreak in 2002 the practice of wearing masks became particularly prevalent.

Sociologist Peter Baehr wrote of the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2002, which had a 10 per cent mortality rate: “Mask-wearing became the quickly improvised, if obligatory, social ritual; failing to don one was met with righteous indignation, a clear sign of ritual violation.

Could we see ongoing adoption of face masks, even after a vaccine? - Getty
Could we see ongoing adoption of face masks, even after a vaccine? - Getty

“The mask symbolized a rule of conduct – namely, an obligation to protect the wider community,” he adds.

Time will tell which new rules of conduct – face masks, high levels of sanitisation, social distancing – endure, and which ones vanish into oblivion, once a vaccine emerges and the world returns to some semblance of normality, but Dr Richard Dawood is optimistic.

“Ultimately, widespread availability of a vaccine would make everyone safer and would help things return to normal, as long as most people choose to be vaccinated,” he says.