Government Response

The Government responded to this petition on Monday 23rd August 2021

Ministerial decisions on allocations to the red list are informed by the latest scientific data and public health advice, to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of concern.

From 24 December 2020, visitors arriving into England who had departed from or transited through South Africa in the previous ten days were prohibited, following evidence suggesting community transmission of new variants of concern. The government took this decisive action to impose additional measures on South Africa to prevent further domestic infection in the UK. These measures excluded commercially operated aircraft carrying no passengers and aircraft operated by or in support of Her Majesty’s Government in the UK.

From 15 February 2021, international arrivals to England were required to quarantine in a government-managed hotel if, within the ten days before arrival, they had been in or transited a country to which a travel ban applied. This included arrivals from South Africa.

On 17 May 2021, the Government introduced the traffic light system to provide a framework for a safe and sustainable return to international travel. The traffic light system categorises countries and territories based on risk to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of COVID-19. The traffic light system categorises countries based on risk to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of COVID-19. The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) produces risk assessments of countries and territories. Decisions on red, amber or green list assignment and associated border measures are taken by Ministers, who take into account the JBC risk assessments, alongside wider public health factors.
Key factors in the JBC risk assessment of each country include:

o Genomic surveillance capability

o COVID-19 transmission risk

o Variant of Concern transmission risk

A summary of the JBC methodology is published on gov.uk, alongside key data that supports Ministers' decisions. The summary of the JBC methodology is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-risk-assessment-methodology-to-inform-international-travel-traffic-light-system and the data is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/data-informing-international-travel-risk-assessments.

Country allocations to the traffic light system are reviewed every three weeks, unless concerning evidence means we need to act faster to protect public health. At the most recent review on 4 August, it was decided that South Africa would remain on the red list as South Africa continues to present a high public health risk to the UK from known variants of concern.

The current measures permit entry to only British and Irish Nationals (and third country nationals with residence rights in the UK) arriving from high-risk (commonly referred to as red list) countries, who are also required to quarantine in government managed hotels. These are all temporary measures that are kept under regular review and the government maintains that they will only be kept in place whilst the level of public health risk justifies the measures.

We will not compromise on the progress we have made on our vaccine programme by allowing people to freely mix abroad and return or travel to the UK without proper checks and procedures. This is just the start for opening international travel, with the UK leading the way with a robust system.

As with all our coronavirus measures, we keep the red list under regular review and our priority remains to protect the health of the public in the UK.

Department for Transport