LONDON, United Kingdom – The United Kingdom will remove Zimbabwe and 10 other African countries from its “red list” of travel restrictions from 4AM on Wednesday, acceptance that the Omicron coronavirus variant can no longer be contained.
The UK’s Covid-19 operations cabinet committee which met Tuesday took the decision to ease travel restrictions which caused travel chaos for tens of thousands of travellers and drew condemnation, particularly from South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria which was due to announce reciprocal travel restrictions on the UK on Tuesday.
The countries on the red list, which requires a mandatory 10-day hotel quarantine, are Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The decision will be welcomed by the travel and hospitality industries, who have argued that the red list system has severely restricted travel.
The Financial Times, citing sources, reported that UK ministers had concluded it was “pointless” maintaining the red list that will restrict travel over the Christmas period while the new variant was spreading so rapidly. The decision was backed up by public health advice, officials said.
Sajid Javid, the UK health secretary, has previously hinted that the red list no longer served a purpose. He told the House of Commons last week: “If, as I think is likely, we see many more infections and this variant becomes the dominant variant, there will be less need to have any kind of travel restrictions at all.”
Although all countries will be removed from the red list, government insiders said that the system will be kept on standby and could be activated again in the future if required.
