South Africa & 11 Other Countries to be Removed from UK Travel Red List
The United Kingdom will be removing eleven countries including South Africa from the travel ‘red list’.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the lifting of the travel ban will come into effect at 6am South African time on Wednesday morning.
The British government added South Africa including Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe to its red list in late November, meaning that entry was only allowed to UK citizens or residents who then must quarantine in a hotel, in a bid to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
Javed said while there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad.
“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4am tomorrow morning.”
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said these testing measureswould be reviewed in the first week of January.
Source – Reuters
