Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, coming to you from the offices of the independent.

Today, I want to talk about long COVID restrictions. I've had a number of people getting in touch,

well, I do pretty much every day, saying,

what about the rules for here, there and everywhere?

And here's one from Yonathan, who says,

do you know anything about when the Netherlands and Luxembourg will lift the travel ban

for unvaccinated travellers from the UK?

He's been trying to get plenty of information, but he simply can't. And there are many people

in that position who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to be vaccinated, or perhaps they have

had the initial course and they do not wish or intend to have a booster. And goodness, if you are in that position,

then there's an awful lot of the world closed off to you as a British traveller.

Because we've left the European Union,

we are a third country with so many aspects of life

and in particular the issue of whether you can visit a country

such as Spain or indeed Luxembourg or the Netherlands without having been fully vaccinated.

And what does fully vaccinated mean anyway? Generally for those countries in the European Union that still have rules,

and of course they are each sovereign in terms of what rules they can choose to imply, the general

view is okay, well, you've got to have had your initial course of vaccinations generally two of them

although if it's moderner it might just be one and if that finished more than 270 days ago

that's just short of nine months then you are obliged to have a booster. And for the avoidance of doubt, and there is so much

doubt afoot, it is not necessary to have had 270 days or less since the booster was administered.

Of course, we've got more boosters coming down the road now,

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