Greece remains on UK amber list

Canada, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the autonomous Portuguese islands of the Azores were added to the green list. Travellers returning from these destinations face the lightest rules, regardless of vaccination status.

No countries were removed from the green list and no destinations were promoted from the 'high-risk' red list to amber.

Additions to the red list

Montenegro and Thailand were both demoted from amber to red, necessitating 11 nights of hotel quarantine for arrivals to the UK from 30 August onwards, at a cost of £2,285 per solo traveller.

There was disappointment in the tourist industry that Turkey remains on the red list. The government in Ankara, as well as the travel industry in the UK, had lobbied intensively for the country to be taken off the high-risk register and moved to the “amber list” – meaning travellers fully vaccinated in the UK or EU need not self-isolate on return.

Sean Doyle, chairman and chief executive of British Airways, said: “Despite our world-leading vaccination programme the UK’s economic recovery remains far behind our more pragmatic European neighbours, which are already reaping the rewards of a rapid recovery.

“We have a much more costly, prohibitive and restrictive testing regime than everyone else. We also need to urgently end the uncertainty caused by the constant threat of changes to countries’ traffic light status. Our ‘green’ list is much smaller than that of the US and EU, despite no new variants being transported into the UK.”
 

With information from The Independent