The UK government has removed several more countries from the travel corridors list, meaning arrivals from these destinations will have to quarantine for 14 days.
From 0400 tomorrow (Saturday August 15), arrivals into the UK from France, the Netherlands, Monaco, Malta, Turks and Caicos Islands and Aruba will have to self-isolate.
The Department for Transport (DfT) said that “The Joint Biosecurity Centre and Public Health England have indicated a significant change in coronavirus (Covid-19) risk in all six destinations, leading to ministers removing these from the current list of travel corridors”.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has also updated its website, to advise against all but essential travel to the destinations list above.
“Data from France shows that over the past week (August 7 to 13) there has been a 66 per cent increase in newly reported cases and a 52 per cent increase in weekly incidence rate per 100,000 population, indicating a sharp rise in Covid-19,” said the DfT.
“There has been a consistent increase in newly reported cases in the Netherlands over the past 4 weeks, with a 52 per cent increase in newly reported cases between August 7 and 13. Over the past week, there has been a 273 per cent increase in newly reported cases in the Turks and Caicos Islands and 1,106 per cent increase in newly reported cases in Aruba. Malta has had a 105 per cent increase in newly reported cases over the past 7 days.”
The UK’s travel corridors came into effect on July 10, allowing travellers arriving from certain destinations to do so without having to self-isolate.
The list was expanded on July 24, but the following day Spain was added back onto the quarantine list due to a rise in cases in the country, and self-isolation measures were also imposed on arrivals from Andorra, Belgium and The Bahamas last week.
The DfT said that “People planning to travel overseas should be mindful that unfortunately disruption is possible, in order to protect public health, and the government is prepared to remove countries from the travel corridors list rapidly if the public health risk of people returning from a particular country without self-isolating becomes too high”.
The current list of travel corridors can be seen here.
As our consumer editor Alex McWhirter reported last week, customers arriving into the UK on Eurostar from mainland Europe should be aware that they may need to quarantine, even if their original point of departure was not from one of the affected destinations.
Are you due to arrive back from France one of the other destinations removed from the list of travel corridors? Let us know your experiences in the comments section below.