How often will the ‘traffic light system’ be updated?
Q Another question on the new “traffic light” system for international travel. Is it your understanding that countries will change traffic light colour only on the monthly “review” dates? Or will they be able to move to green or the other way weekly, like last summer?
Ben B
A International leisure travel is expected to resume from the UK on 17 May. Ahead of the restart, the UK government will divide the countries of the world, and possibly regions within them, into risk categories.
The status will depend on the perceived danger of coronavirus, and in particular variants of concern, being imported from each nation.
Highest risk countries will be red (requiring 11 nights hotel quarantine plus three Covid tests), followed by amber (10 days self-isolation at home plus three Covid tests) and green (no quarantine but two Covid tests). In addition there will be a “green watchlist”, comprising nations/regions on the green list whose data suggests they may shortly move to amber or even red.
The date for the initial assignation is not clear. The travel industry veteran, Paul Goldstein, said: “The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, seems to think you can just turn the travel industry on and off like a switch.” Jet2 and its holiday division have cancelled every departure up to 23 June; the company does not want to subject its customers or its staff to yet more uncertainty.
The government says it will “hold three ‘checkpoints’ on 28 June, 31 July and 1 October to review measures”. But I do not expect these to be particularly significant dates in determining the status of individual countries. Looking at the pattern as it emerged last year: initially the list of quarantine-free nations was published on a Friday afternoon (3 July to be precise), with the easing taking effect a week later.
Two weekends after that, Spain was taken off the list at a few hours’ notice; and for a further week or two there were some ad hoc changes. But pretty quickly we settled into a routine of changes being announced every Thursday at 5pm. I imagine something similar will happen this summer, though I firmly believe most changes will be positive – ie moving nations/regions from red to amber and from amber to green as infection rates fall and vaccination rates rise.