CYPRUS said it will open its borders to vaccinated Britons from the beginning of May – although UK government restrictions on foreign travel will still be in force.

Nearly a million people in the UK have received two doses of a Covid-19 jab, and the Cypriot government said those who had both jabs could travel without restrictions from May 1.

However, the date Cyprus has set to open its borders to Britons is still more than two weeks before the earliest people in England will be able to leave the country for holidays.

Cyprus’s deputy tourism minister Savvas Perdios said the country would allow Britons who had been given vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency the right to enter without the need for a negative test or to quarantine.

Tourists would be required to have had their second dose at the latest seven days before travel, the minister added.

Cyprus has already struck a similar agreement allowing Israeli tourists to enter the country from April 1.

But foreign leisure travel will still be barred for people in England at the beginning of May, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying the earliest Britons could jet away is May 17.

This is dependant on various factors related to the coronavirus pandemic, such as vaccine rollouts and the prevalence of Covid-19 variants.

While the only flights currently operating at Leeds Bradford Airport are to Belfast, in normal times it usually operates flights to both Larnaca and Paphos in the Mediterranean island nation.

Cyprus is not one of the countries on the UK's red list of countries, so if you travelled back to the UK from Cyprus you would not be required to spend an expensive ten days in a Government quarantine hotel on return.