Eluned Morgan, Minister for Health and Social Services
On 17 May 2021 the First Minister announced that international travel would resume and confirmed that Wales would use the same traffic-light system for international travel as in other parts of the UK. However the Welsh Government has also made it clear that international travel should only be undertaken for essential journeys. In order to facilitate international travel for these essential journeys the following steps have been undertaken.
We are working closely with the UK government to ensure that Welsh citizens can access the NHS-app to obtain COVID-19 status certificates. However, at the current time the system is unable to provide a service to anyone that lives in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Whilst we finalise a timescale for our inclusion, we have put in place a temporary system that will enable people in Wales to get a letter demonstrating their vaccination record. This means that from the 24 May, people in Wales who have had two doses of the vaccine and need to travel to a country which requires COVID-19 vaccination in the next four weeks should ring 0300 303 5667. Travellers should note that certificates will take 7-10 working days to process. I would like to formally thank Swansea Council and their Test, Trace, Protect contact tracing team for their professionalism and flexibility in designing and delivering the service at such short notice.
Guidance on the provision of COVID-19 vaccination status.
I want to emphasise that this service should only be used if you need to travel to a country which requires vaccine certification and you are not able to provide tests to meet the countries entry requirements. Do not use this service for non-urgent requests.
At the moment most countries do not yet require vaccination certificates and negative PCR tests continue to be accepted as the main entry criteria. I would encourage everyone who plans to travel to check the requirements of the countries that they are travelling to before asking for a vaccination certificate.
I want to be clear that Welsh Government believes that at the current time people should not travel abroad unless they have to. Everyone returning from a green-list country will still have to book and pay for a test on their return and quarantine and testing requirements continue to apply if you travel to amber and red list countries.
We want to do everything we can to prevent coronavirus re-entering Wales as a result of international travel and our advice is to make Wales the destination of choice for this summer rather than travelling abroad.