Chief Minister Howard Quayle and Health Minister David Ashford have announced the easing of travel restrictions for residents.

Residents aged 18 and over who are not fully vaccinated no longer have to apply for a Manx Travel Permit.

And those residents who are fully vaccinated will no longer have to apply for a vaccination exemption.

Landing forms will still be required for all travellers, including a health declaration form.

Also from Thursday this week the government is removing the requirement for testing and isolation for any resident who is not fully vaccinated, so long as they have only travelled within the Common Travel Area (the UK, Ireland and the Crown Dependencies) in the past ten days before travelling to the island.

Scanners will also be installed at border points to allow people to ’self serve’ by scanning the digital QR codes on their travel documentation.

Peel harbour will be partially reopening from today (Thursday).

However, there will be ’limited windows for docking’ and booking will be required.

Mr Quayle said that the Council of Ministers had made these decisions ’after careful consideration’ and that it represented ’another baby step’.

This briefing was the first ’routine update’ held since August 5, and Mr Quayle said that this time gap reflected the ’broadly stable situation both here and across the water’, and that there had been a ’plateau’ in case numbers on island.

The government is also publishing a revised plan titled ’learning to live in world with Covid-19’ which sets out its decision making over next one to three months.

It is available from gov.im/covid19.

The Isle of Man Examiner’s reporter asked what will happen with regard to the vaccination of children aged 12 to 15.

The UK’s JCVI (whose advice the island follows) has decided not to recommend this, but the UK’s chief medical officers have now said that the age group should receive at least one dose.

Health Minister David Ashford said in the briefing that he would think it unlikely that the UK government would go against JCVI advice, but that if they did so, the Manx government would have to seek advice from its own public health professionals and ’weigh up that balance of risk’ with regard to vaccinating this age group.

Public health director Dr Henrietta Ewart said that the government would ’look at what comes out from the [UK] chief medical officers in due course, and then there will be an issue of how we assess that for our context on island’.

The Chief Minister was also asked whether there were any plans to introduce vaccine passports to attend certain events and venues (like nightclubs), which will be the case in Scotland from October 1.

England however recently announced it would not be introducing vaccine passports in these contexts.

Mr Quayle said the government would be ’monitoring the situation’.

Mr Ashford said that ’At we are not suggesting that we are going to be imposing any restrictions on any events on island’.