When is the next UK travel-list update and what can we expect?

What you need to know about the announcement — and which countries might make the green grade

Source:Thetimes

Since overseas travel from the UK got the most cautious of green lights in May, our foreign holiday decisions have been ruled by the traffic-light system: all of the world’s countries and territories assigned to the green, amber or red lists. These are roughly based on the Covid-19 risk in the destination and the possibility of bringing troublesome new variants back to the UK.

It’s now the amber-red boundary that is most keenly watched: the wrong side of it involves an 11-night stay in a quarantine hotel on the return home, with all the associated costs. For the fully vaccinated there is now little practical difference between the green and amber lists in terms of travel restrictions (both require a pre-departure test and a PCR test within two days of arrival), but a promotion or relegation is still a sign of which way the pandemic is heading in your destination.

So if you’ve taken to scanning the Twitter feed of Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, to see what the latest change to the traffic-light lists at the Department for Transport might be, prepare yourself for the next likely announcement with some background information.

Main photo: Riviera Beach, Malta (visitmalta.com)

When is the next government travel announcement?

The next changes to the traffic-light lists are most likely to be announced this afternoon. Since early June, these updates have happened every three weeks, on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, and the last such announcement was on Wednesday, August 4. There has been a bit more variation in the number of days it takes for these updates to come into effect, but it’s roughly four to six days after the announcement, so expect new rules for any recategorised countries to apply from around August 29 or 30. If the three-week timetable continues, we might see a further change to the lists revealed around September 15, applying to the last week or so of that month and early October.

It’s also worth remembering that the travel lists and the rules that go with them are not strictly a UK-wide matter, but a devolved one — although in practice the changes have stayed in sync between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Fishermen work on stilts in Sri Lanka: the country is currently on the red list (Getty Images)

What happened in previous updates to the green, amber and red lists?

After the initial announcement of the traffic-light lists, the first shock to the system came on June 3, when it was announced that Portugal would be moving from green to amber (which at the time meant home quarantine for all on return). It was also then that Egypt and Sri Lanka, among others, moved from amber to red. The green list lengthened at the end of June with Malta, the Balearic Islands, Madeira and many Caribbean islands joining the favoured few, although the Dominican Republic, Tunisia and four other amber-list destinations went red.

Perhaps the best news for travellers came in July, with the announcement that quarantine on return from amber-list countries would not be necessary for fully vaccinated arrivals after July 19. In the interval between those two dates came mixed fortunes: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hong Kong and Taiwan going green, the Balearics rejoining mainland Spain on the amber list, and Cuba and Indonesia labelled red. The biggest surprise was the creation of a so-called amber-plus category for France alone, keeping the quarantine requirements on return even for the fully vaccinated.

Unless you were coming back from France between July 19 and August 8, however, this proved to be just a temporary hiccup. The August 4 announcement (which came into force on August 8) brought France back unambiguously into the amber list, along with India, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, while the green list gained seven new European members: Austria, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The latest amber-to-red movers were Mexico, Georgia and the French Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Réunion.

Which countries could switch colours on the traffic-light system in this update?

The loudest chatter before the expected August 25 review has focused on Spain, and whether it might move from amber to red because of cases of the beta variant in the country. Fears seem to have eased, though, and cases in Spain have been falling steeply since a late July peak. Cyprus is showing a similar trend, having at one point had the highest case rates among European amber-list countries. In fact, confirmed Covid-19 cases per million people are lower almost everywhere in Europe than they are in the UK, so case rates alone may not justify moves from amber to red, unless there are specific variants of concern.

Looking at how individual countries are faring with official case rates, amber-list Italy is doing better than some green-list members, and red-list Turkey sits squarely among European amber-listers such as France, Portugal and Greece. It’s been suggested that Turkey could get an upgrade from red to amber in the August 25 travel announcement.

Promotion doesn’t rest solely on the bare numbers, though. With the perceived reliability of data also a factor, as well as the prevalence of certain variants locally, second-guessing the information fed into the government, and the decisions likely to be taken is fraught with complexity.

In terms of which countries could drop down a category, the “green watchlist” tag has already served as a public note of caution among green-list members. Of these, Dominica and Israel are experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases, although with the latter country still largely closed to tourists, a move from green to amber will make little difference. Recent talk of an amber watchlist has so far come to nothing, but among amber-list countries, those with recent spikes in cases include Jamaica, Montenegro, Malaysia, Fiji, St Lucia and Thailand.

The single biggest positive change for British travellers that could be announced on or around August 25 would be Turkey moving from the red list to amber; likewise for the Maldives. But besides the red list, the significant obstacle now to foreign travel from the UK is something that the British government has little to no say in: destination countries’ own quarantine requirements or restrictive border policies, whether it’s those such as amber-list Italy, the US, Thailand and Japan, or green-list Australia and New Zealand.