The UK government declared the number of countries on its Covid travel red list will be reduced to 7 from 54.
Initially, countries like South Africa, Brazil and Mexico came off from the list as the travellers were required to quarantine in an approved hotel at their cost for 10 full days.
According to transport secretary Grant Shapps, the changes begin on Monday and “mark the next step” in opening travel.
This latest decision is considered to be a boost to the airline industry and families separated during the pandemic.
Whereas, the seven countries that are still on the red list are – Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Recently, the travel rules have been simplified in the UK with the amber list cut and advice against holidays changed for 32 countries.
Travellers coming from 37 more destinations will have their vaccination status certificates recognised. In other words, they can avoid more expensive post-arrival testing requirements.
Vaccinated travellers from Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey and the UK residents that are returning and are fully vaccinated will be treated the same.
But there is an exception – they should have not visited a red-list country in the 10 days before arriving in England.
Apart from that, all arrivals will still complete a passenger locator form.
A source from the UK government said that the government still intended to swap the so-called day two “PCR test on arrival” with a cheaper lateral flow test by the half-term break, for many schools in England after 22 October.
Later they confirmed that the government was still working on a date to introduce the new testing rule.
Under current rules, travellers must use more expensive PCR tests for their day two, post-arrival screening.
Moreover, people who are not fully vaccinated must provide a further PCR test on day eight.
Airlines and the travel industry praised a “much-improved system” but called on ministers to implement changes to testing as soon as possible.
In addition to this, they want the ministers to consider scrapping tests for passengers arriving from low-risk countries.
