Ditch traffic light system, says vaccines guru

Former head of jabs taskforce says single ‘red list’ for countries should replace current system

THE traffic light system for overseas travel should be ditched and replaced with just a single “red list” of countries, the former head of the Government’s vaccines taskforce has said.

Clive Dix, the interim chairman of the taskforce from January to April, told The Daily Telegraph that, given the high proportion of the UK adult population who had been vaccinated, the current border arrangements were too complicated.

He backed the idea of replacing the green-amber-red system with a small list of countries that people would have to quarantine from when returning to the UK. For all other countries a Covid test once home would suffice, Mr Dix suggested.

“It’s simple and it’s not too onerous. It allows for people to have more freedom, basically,” Mr Dix said of such an arrangement. “I think the current system probably means people who are slightly poorer in society struggle to be able to do any travel abroad and I think that’s unfair.”

The traffic light system continues to create uncertainty for travellers, including those who scrambled to return from Mexico before it entered the red list yesterday. However, holidaymakers are now able to go to France without quarantining on return if they are double jabbed.

Mr Dix also called for hundreds of millions of doses of Covid vaccines to be given away by the Government for use in developing nations.

He argued that the Government had a humanitarian necessity to do more to stop people dying of Covid in poorer parts of the world.

Mr Dix also came out against the use of vaccine passports domestically – something Boris Johnson has warned could become mandated for entry into nightclubs come the autumn – calling it a “waste of time”.

The vaccine taskforce was created by the Government in the spring of 2020, just weeks after the coronavirus pandemic emerged, to drive forward the discovery and production of working vaccinations.

Mr Dix stressed that with so many adults now vaccinated in the UK – almost 90 per cent have had their first jab, according to the Government’s Covid data dashboard – it is time to try to get life back to as “normal” as possible. Currently, there are four different categories in the Government’s travel rules: green, green watchlist, amber and red. For the first, just a Covid test will suffice on return; for the latter, 10 days quarantine in a hotel picked by the Government at the cost of more than £2,000 per adult.

Some travel industry sources, Tory MPS and even Labour frontbenchers are calling for the traffic light system to be scrapped in place of a much simpler system.

Mr Dix agreed, voicing support for a set-up that would see a handful of countries of concern – such as those with little Covid genomic sequencing – to be on a red list that needs quarantining and all others to require just a test on return.

He said: “At the moment, I think it should be very simple. I think there’s only a few countries now that have a very low level of vaccines and aren’t being well surveyed, so we don’t really know what the viral variants are there.

“But the rest of them, we’re pretty sure what’s there. And I think there’s no difference between moving around there and us moving around within the UK.”

He added that already the known variants of concerns – such as those originally founded in India and South Africa – have reached the UK and cases are now dropping.

Mr Dix cautioned that a crucial element would have to remain: Careful monitoring for a potential “breakthrough” variant and a “very clear strategy” of action should that happen.

A second area where Mr Dix hoped for something close to normality to prevail was vaccine passports, which would see people having to prove they had been jabbed before entry into certain venues. Mr Dix dismissed the idea of vaccine passports: “Domestically, I think it’s a waste of time.”

His argument, boiled down, was to have faith in the impact of the vaccines rather than placing new barriers to socialising that could then remain in the long term.

But the argument Mr Dix most wants to be heard in Whitehall is his call to give spare Covid vaccines to developing countries where just a tiny proportion of people have been jabbed.

The Prime Minister pledged to give away 100 million Covid vaccines at the G7 summit earlier this year and has adopted the target of vaccinating the world by the end of 2022.

But Mr Dix echoed calls from leading international development bodies in saying that more help still needs to be pledged by richer countries to make sure that target is hit. “If we vaccinate the whole UK population, it’s 120 million doses or thereabouts,” he said, given the ambition to twice jab all those over 16 in the UK. “We have ordered I think at the last count somewhere between 300 and 400 million doses. So what do we do with all those vaccines?”

Mr Dix argued they should be given away, with the exception of some doses for vulnerable Britons to get autumn booster shots. Some backers of that move have argued doing so would be in the UK’S self-interest, given future surges of Covid overseas could see new vaccine-busting variants emerge.

♦ Britain is close to achieving herd immunity, according to a scientific adviser to the Government. Mark Woolhouse, of Sage’s SPI-M sub-group, said cases had not risen to the dangerous levels of last year’s peak. But he said measures such as wearing masks would still be needed for months.

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