Pakistan and Turkey are likely to be removed from the UK’s travel red list as their governments meet on Thursday to revise the country’s travel warning for countries forbidden from flying into the UK.
As ministers prepare to upgrade the traffic light system for the final time this summer, Turkey has stated that it expects to be removed from the UK’s travel red list within days.
There is also demand for limitations on travelers arriving from Pakistan to be loosened before the amendments are signed off by the government on Thursday.
Senior Whitehall insiders, on the other hand, dismissed any notion of a major revamp, implying that the news is unlikely to influence as many tourists as earlier evaluations.
Following the relaxation of quarantine restrictions last month, allowing fully vaccinated travelers returning from amber-list countries to avoid self-isolation, the red list, which includes 60 nations, is getting special attention.
Read more: UK ‘looking into’ removing Pakistan from COVID-19 travel red list
Only British citizens and nationalities are permitted to travel from these countries to the UK, and upon arrival, they must stay in a hotel for 11 nights at a cost of £2,285 per adult.
According to government officials, the red list is no longer considered as a means to temporarily halt passenger traffic, but rather as a more medium-term halt.
Will Pakistan be removed from the red list in UK travel update?
Turkey and Pakistan are two countries on the red list wanting to be moved to the amber list. All travelers would be permitted back into the UK as long as they tested negative for Covid before leaving. Some people will be quarantined at home for up to 10 days, while others who were completely vaccinated in the UK, Europe, or the United States with a medicine authorized by their national agencies may be exempt.
The latest scientific data “supports our anticipation” that Turkey “would be removed from the red list at the upcoming review,” according to the Turkish embassy in London. It stated that case numbers in Turkey were “declining and lower than in the United Kingdom,” with the seven-day average in Turkey being 232.46 cases per 100,000 persons compared to 464.76 in the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Ministers are facing pressure to remove Pakistan on the red list. The all-party parliamentary group on Pakistan, led by Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi and Conservative MP Rehman Chishti, wrote to the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, pressing him to designate it as amber.
The Ministers claimed that there were no variants of concern in Pakistan other than Delta, which already accounted for the majority of cases in the UK, and that keeping Pakistan on the red list was “causing grievous suffering to so many people within the diaspora who have been unable to see family members, particularly seriously ill parents, as well as separating spouses and children.”
