Tag: 유켄영국유학

Covid travel tests can cost more than five times the price of a return flight to Europe, it emerged last night.

It leaves families paying hundreds of pounds extra to go abroad this summer with MPs branding the expense ‘a rip-off’.

Ministers face increasing pressure to cap how much travellers pay for PCR tests and scrap on them to stop would-be holidaymakers from being priced out of foreign breaks.

A study by MPs looked at the cost of trips to popular European destinations later this month and compared them with the average fee for a single PCR swab after getting back to Britain.

It found Ryanair was offering return flights from East Midlands airport to Barcelona and Exeter to Alicante for just £18 between August 24 and 27.

But the typical charge for a post-return PCR test among Government-approved providers is £93 – some five times as expensive.The swab is also almost four times as costly as a return flight from London Stansted to Madrid.

And for destinations such as Berlin, Budapest and Faro in the Algarve, the test is more than double the price of plane tickets.

The research only includes the cost of a single post-return PCR swab, which double-jabbed travellers must take by day two after returning from a green or amber country.

It does not include the pre-return swab all passengers must take before boarding UK-bound planes, meaning testing bills as a proportion of flight costs can be even greater.Non-fully vaccinated holidaymakers also face much larger bills as they are required to take two post-return PCR swabs on days two and eight.

The Daily Mail has championed calls for the Government to drive down costs.

Tory MP Henry Smith, chairman of the all-party Future of Aviation Group, which conducted the study, said: ‘These figures demonstrate that testing for international travel has become little more than a tax on travel, adding a huge disincentive to travel.

‘When the cost of testing can be more than the price of a ticket, it is clear that the current system is not fit for purpose and needs urgent reform to stop the rip-off fees we are currently seeing.’

He said travellers should be allowed to take much cheaper rapid lateral flow tests on return followed by a ‘gold standard’ PCR only if this is positive.

He added: ‘Alongside this, ministers must urgently consider a cap on the total cost of testing.It is high time that the Government got to grips with this issue.’ Sir Graham Brady MP, chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, said: ‘The number of tests required and their exorbitant prices in the UK risk making foreign holidays the preserve of the well off.

‘This is plainly unfair to families on average incomes and risks destroying our very successful travel industry.This problem should be tackled as a matter of urgency.’

The study found a post-return PCR test can also cost more than return flights to Nice in southern France, Malta, Gibraltar and the Balearic island of Menorca, doubling the cost of a trip even for fully vaccinated individuals.

Carrier easyJet is offering return flights to Mahon in Menorca for £61 later this month, making the average cost of a test nearly 50 per cent more than the flights.British Airways is offering return flights from Heathrow to Paris for £100, making the typical post-return testing bill almost as expensive as the flights.

Ministers insist arrivals must take pricier PCR tests as they are considered more accurate and can be ‘sequenced’ for 유켄영국유학 mutant Covid strains.But NHS Test and Trace figures show just 5 per cent of swabs are being sequenced. Greece and Italy have capped the price of PCR tests, while in France they are free for citizens. Some European countries have also axed VAT on testing kits.

The Government has repeatedly said it is working with the travel industry and testing providers to see how to ‘further reduce the cost of travel for the public’.Health secretary Sajid Javid has asked the Competition and Markets Authority watchdog to investigate whether travellers are being ripped off by testing firms.

But Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said: ‘While the rest of Europe is enjoying a relatively normal summer on the beach, for many British families the cost of the tests and the confusing and chaotic traffic light system is putting the dream of a foreign holiday out of reach.’

A Government spokesman said: ‘We are clear that all private providers must meet a set of required standards and each provider is held to account by the independent United Kingdom Accreditation Service, with companies that fail to meet high standards being removed from the list of approved suppliers.’

The great travel test farce!Swab boxes left overflowing

By David Churchill and Josh White for the Daily Mail

Britain’s travel testing system was branded an ‘absolute mess’ yesterday after uncollected swabs were left piled high outside pharmacies.

Pictures posted online showed three drop-off boxes run by Randox, 유켄영국유학 the UK’s largest PCR testing provider, overflowing with swabs.

It meant outraged customers were forced to choose between adding to the pile – risking their personal details being stolen by thieves – or shell out for a private courier.

Yesterday’s images have fuelled fears that the testing system will be unable to cope if too many Britons go abroad during the school holidays.

<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news halfRHS" data-version="2" id="mol-2dd8a040-f955-11eb-bd5d-5387e786baff" website tests are FIVE TIMES the cost of a return journey to Europe

By Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Pawel Florkiewicz and Luiza Ilie

WARSAW/BUCHAREST, March 22 (Reuters) – More than 3.5 million people have fled abroad from the war in Ukraine, United Nations data showed on Tuesday, leaving Eastern Europe scrambling to provide them with care, schools and jobs even as daily numbers crossing borders ease.

The millions who have left Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began have made their way on foot, by rail, bus or car to neighboring countries such as Poland and Romania before some travel on across Europe.Most, however, have not done so.

While fewer have crossed borders over the past week, the scale of the task of providing homes to those seeking safety in the European Union is becoming increasingly apparent, above all in Eastern and Central Europe.

Poland, home to the biggest Ukrainian Diaspora in the region even before the war, has taken in more than 2.1 million people and while some plan to head elsewhere, the influx has left public services struggling to cope.

“The number of children of refugees from Ukraine in Polish schools is increasing by about 10,000 per day,” Minister of Education Przemyslaw Czarnek told public radio, saying 85,000 children had been enrolled in Polish schools.

Czarnek said authorities were organizing courses in basic Polish for Ukrainian teachers so they could be employed in local schools and teach preparatory classes for Ukrainian children before entering the school system.

With men of conscription age obliged to stay in Ukraine, the exodus has consisted primarily of women and 유켄영국유학 children, many wanting to stay in countries near Ukraine to be closer to loved ones left behind.

In a video posted on Twitter, Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said 10,000 Ukrainian students had enrolled in Warsaw schools and that a variety of options, including Ukrainian online classes, 유켄영국유학 were needed to avoid a collapse of the city’s education system.

“We will be flexible, we will act, because we want all those young people who are in Warsaw to be able to study, whichever option they choose,” he said.

UKRAINIAN TEACHERS

While border crossings such as Medyka in eastern Poland and Isaccea in northeast Romania have grown less busy, officials are wary that any intensification of the fighting in Ukraine could trigger a new influx.

The head of the U.N.refugee agency (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, said on Sunday the war had uprooted 10 million people since it began on Feb. 24, most of them still displaced within Ukraine rather than abroad.

Russia denies targeting civilians, describing its actions as a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine.Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for Russia’s invasion of a democratic country of 44 million.

More than 500,000 people have fled to Romania, where authorities are sizing up the task at hand while seeking to recruit Ukrainian teachers from among the refugees.

Cosmina Simiean Nicolescu, head of Bucharest’s social assistance unit, 유켄영국유학 said 60 Ukrainian children had begun classes there this week while many private kindergartens and schools had welcomed refugees.

With refugee numbers nearing breaking point in parts of Eastern Europe, Nicolescu said refugees were returning to Romania in the hope of finding a less difficult situation.

“There are people we have personally put on trains to go to the west who we see back at the train station because conditions in countries like Hungary or the Czech Republic don’t suit them,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet in Prague; Writing by Niklas Pollard, editing by Ed Osmond)