SOURCE: BBC News – The remaining seven countries on England’s Covid travel red list will be removed from next Monday.
Fully-vaccinated arrivals from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Haiti and Venezuela will no longer have to quarantine in a hotel.
But the red list system will be kept in place and a country could be added back on it if cases rise there.
The transport secretary said it was a “great boost for travel and all those people employed in the travel sector”.
Grant Shapps added: “We have been able to do this now because the variants of concern that we have been tracking are no longer of concern to the chief medical officers.”
The Department for Transport (DfT) said “Delta is now the dominant variant in most countries around the world. This means the risk of known variants entering the UK has reduced and the government can confidently remove these seven destinations from the red list.”
More countries are also being added to a list of nations and territories whose Covid vaccinations are recognised by the UK, taking it to more than 135 locations in total.
Scotland and Wales have confirmed the changes – which come into effect at 04:00 BST on Monday – will also apply to passengers arriving in those nations.
No announcement has been made by the devolved administration in Northern Ireland, but in recent months it has also followed the Department for Transport’s changes.
The DfT said the red list would be reviewed every three weeks, with data for all countries, including the emergence of new variants, monitored in case countries needed to be added back on.
Mr Shapps said the red list system itself would be reviewed again in the new year but it was “prudent” for the government to keep several hundred hotel rooms available on “standby”.
“We don’t want to re-set up a system from scratch if a particular concern was seen in a particular country and we wanted to be able to have quarantine as a mandatory facility,” he said.
Scotland’s Transport Minister Graeme Dey said the move would help the tourism sector “take another step back towards normal operations”.
But he warned: “The pandemic is not over. The situation will be closely monitored and regularly reviewed and if the situation demands it we will not hesitate to re-impose restrictions on international travel.”
Pandemic travel rules in the UK were simplified earlier this month, with the amber list dropped completely, and advice against holidays changed for many countries.
Fully vaccinated travellers arriving in England from more than 100 countries and territories now need only have a lateral flow test on arrival. Arrivals in Scotland and Wales must have the more expensive PCR test although this will change on Sunday.
People over the age of 18 who are not fully vaccinated or are arriving from a country not on the approved vaccination list have to self-isolate at home for 10 days after arrival in the UK – and pay for a PCR or lateral flow test in the three days before they travel to the UK, and two tests after their return.
Red list countries are those the government said should not be visited “except in the most extreme of circumstances”. The list was introduced as part of measures to reduce the potential risk from travellers infected with coronavirus.
Travellers arriving from a red list destination were required to self-isolate in a government-designated hotel for 11 nights at a cost of £2,285.
More than 200,000 people have stayed in quarantine in hotels since February.
The now-abandoned amber list applied to countries where infections were not seen to be as serious. It initially required passengers to quarantine at home after their arrival, but this restriction was later dropped for the fully-vaccinated when lockdown restrictions ended in July.
