Alex Trelinski
SPAIN is keeping flights to and from the UK going in spite of EU countries like France, Germany, and Ireland closing their borders.
The closures have been in response to a more contagious strain of COVID-19 being confirmed in around London and the South-East at the weekend.
Spain has said that it wants a ‘co-ordinated’ approach from the European Union over what the response should be and that for the time being at least, airports and ports are still open to people arriving from the UK.
An EU co-ordinating committee was set to meet this morning(December 21).
Around 200 flights are scheduled today between UK and Spain and the government has pledged to ensure that all arriving travellers have documents that prove they are negative for the coronavirus.
Spain’s main opposition party, the Partido Popular(PP), has accused Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, of ‘dithering’ over making a swift response over the situation in the UK.
The PP’s spokesperson in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, said:
“The Prime Minister is always late in making a decision as a dozen other countries have already closed their borders.”
“Sanchez should ask himself why other countries are doing it and he doesn’t,” she added.
Speaking to the El Pais newspaper, José Martínez Olmos, from the Andalucia School of Public Health, said:
“We must ban flights as have to find out whether this new strain is circulating in areas where there are more British people like the Costa del Sol, the Costa Blanca, and the Balearic Islands.”
