Dubai airport CEO sees more countries dropping COVID travel testing rules soon

The head of Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, said on Tuesday he expects more countries to soon start ending rules for vaccinated passengers to be tested for COVID-19.

The United Kingdom does not require vaccinated passengers to take a COVID test, while Gulf state Bahrain this month said those arriving would no longer needed to be tested.

“I do expect across the world, the testing regime for travel will start to disappear pretty quickly and we’re hopeful that there will be an announcement over the next few weeks from many different places,” Chief Executive Paul Griffiths said.

“The whole idea of having to have tests for travel will give way to vaccination certificates.”

Griffiths did not say when Dubai would ease its own testing requirements.

Dubai airport is forecasting passenger traffic to more than double this year to 57 million from 29.1 million in 2021.

That is still far below the 86.4 million passengers the airport handled in 2019, the year before the pandemic struck.

via Reuters