UK government announced on Tuesday that hotel quarantine for travellers arriving in England will be abandoned.
Under restrictions introduced to slow the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, all travellers arriving in the UK from the 11 African countries currently on the UK’s travel “red list” have been required to spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel at a cost of £2,285 ($3,029) for solo travellers.
But Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that the spread of Omicron in the UK and the world means the red list is “now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad.”
He told the House of Commons: “I can announce today that whilst we’ll maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel, we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 a.m. tomorrow.”
Responding to a question about the people already in hotel quarantine, Javid said that “the practice in the past” has been to require those people to complete their quarantine period.
But he said he has asked for “urgent advice” on whether they can now be released and he hopes to act “very quickly” on that.
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines UK, welcomed the decision but said it “doesn’t go nearly far enough.”
Despite the scrapping of the red list, all travellers arriving in England are still required to take a pre-departure CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus test and self-isolate until they receive a negative result from a post-arrival test.
Alderslade said: “If the red list isn’t necessary given that Omicron is established here at home, then neither are the costly emergency testing and isolation measures imposed on even fully vaccinated travellers, which again put us completely at odds with the rest of Europe. It is testing that is the deterrent to travel, not the relatively limited red list.”
He warned that the key Christmas and New Year booking period will be “undermined” unless testing rules are eased.
“This is make or break for UK aviation and if government is unable to row back from these restrictions over the New Year, it will need to step in with further economic support for a sector that again has been singled out,” he added.
David Frost, chief executive of South Africa Tourism Services, said: “This is welcome news but red-listing southern Africa for just three weeks caused incalculable damage to jobs and livelihoods in the region, with little discernible benefit to health outcomes in the UK.
“ UK government must now consign this blunt instrument to history and recognise the devastating impact red lists have to confidence amongst the travelling public.”
PA contributed to this report.
Pezou : UK Scraps COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine for Travelers from 11 African Countries