Covid travel rules: Portugal removed from UK’s green list as seven others join red list
By Dulcie Lee From BBC News
Portugal will be removed from the government’s green travel list from Tuesday, amid rising coronavirus cases and concern over a “Nepal mutation of the so-called Indian variant”.
It will join the amber list, meaning holidaymakers should not visit and arrivals must self-isolate for 10 days.
Seven countries including Egypt, Costa Rica and Sri Lanka will join the red list, with the toughest travel rules.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the move was a “safety-first approach”.
The UK’s devolved nations set their own travel rules, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been following changes made by England.
Countries have their own rules about allowing visitors, so being on the UK’s green list does not guarantee travellers can visit.
The red list will expand to include Afghanistan, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Trinidad and Tobago. People arriving in the UK from these destinations will be required to stay in a quarantine hotel for 10 days.
The changes come into effect at 04:00 BST on Tuesday.
No new countries will be added to the green list, Mr Shapps said.
He said two factors had led to the decision to downgrade Portugal, along with the islands of Madeira and the Azores.
“One is the positivity rate has nearly doubled since the last review in Portugal,” he said.
“And the other is there’s a sort of Nepal mutation of the so-called Indian variant [now known as Delta] which has been detected and we just don’t know the potential for that to be a vaccine-defeating mutation.”
On 2 June, Portugal had 5.4 new cases per 100,000 people per day, which was only a little higher than the UK at 5.1 – but differences in the amount of testing being done make direct comparisons difficult.
Labour said downgrading Portugal was “not the answer” and called for the amber list to be scrapped altogether.
The travel and tourism industry also voiced dismay, as shares fell in airlines and travel companies after the BBC first reported plans to lower Portugal’s rating.
EasyJet’s chief executive accused the government of having “torn up its own rule book”, saying the decision “essentially cuts the UK off from the rest of the world”.
The chief executive of Heathrow Airport said: “Ministers spent last month hailing the restart of international travel, only to close it down three weeks later.”
For more on this story go to: BBC
