The Government has provided timings for the scrapping of tests for double-jabbed arrivals into the UK and the expansion of the NHS COVID pass for 12 to 15-year-olds for international travel.

Testing for fully vaccinated arrivals will be ditched from 4am on Friday 11 February, while 12 to 15-year-olds in England will be able to prove their vaccination status on the NHS COVID pass from 3 February.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told the Commons: “From 4am on February 11, and in time for the half-term break, eligible fully vaccinated passengers arriving in the UK will no longer have to take a post-arrival lateral flow test.”

Travellers will still have to fill in a Passenger Locator Form, although the Government said it would make it easier.

He said the Government had stuck to its promise that the tests would not be kept ‘in place a day longer than necessary’, adding border testing for vaccinated travellers had ‘outlived its usefulness’.

Mr Shapps said the move would make travel easier, as well as save families money and provide certainty to passengers, operators and the tourism sector’.

He said the expansion of the NHS COVID pass to 12 to 15-year-olds would help families plan for the February half term.

Under 18s will not need to be tested at the border.

The Transport Secretary also said passengers who do not qualify as fully vaccinated will ‘no longer be required to do a day 8 test after arrival, or indeed to self-isolate’.

“They will still need to fill out a passenger locator form to demonstrate proof of a negative COVID test taken two days before they travel and they must still take a post-arrival PCR test,” he said.

The ‘fully vaccinated’ definition currently still means two doses, or one dose of Janssen vaccine.