The Latest: British vacationers descend on Portugal

LISBON, Portugal — British vacationers have started arriving in Portugal after the U.K. and Portuguese governments eased their COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions.

A flight from Manchester, England, arrived early Monday in Faro, the main city in Portugal’s southern Algarve tourist region. More than 5,000 British visitors were expected to arrive in Portugal on 17 flights during the day.

That has brightened the outlook for Portugal’s crucial tourism sector, which relies heavily on the U.K. market and which shut down for most of the past year.

Both Portugal and the United Kingdom have reduced their seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people to between 3 and 4.

The U.K. government has put Portugal and 11 other countries on a so-called Green List of low-risk territories. British people returning home from those areas do no need to go into quarantine.

Portugal from Monday allowed nonessential travel from all but five European countries.

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

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— Follow more of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

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