Government Response

The Government responded to this petition on Thursday 23rd September 2021

Decisions on the Red List are made by Ministers, informed by the latest scientific data and public health advice, to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of COVID-19.

Travel restrictions were introduced for Brazil from 15 January 2021, meaning that visitors who have been in or transited Brazil in the last 10 days were denied entry to the UK. The decision to ban travel was taken to prevent the spread of a new strain of coronavirus into the UK which was first identified in Brazil and subsequently named the Beta variant.

These measures did not include British and Irish Nationals, or third country nationals with residence rights in the UK, who were able to enter the UK but were required to self-isolate for 10 days on arrival along with their household.

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 Brazil.

On 17 May 2021, the UK Government introduced the traffic light system to provide a risk-based framework for the 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 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:
- Genomic surveillance capability
- COVID-19 transmission risk
- 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.

Following the third Global Travel Taskforce review on 17 September, the Government announced a number of significant changes to the international travel system to take advantage of the world leading vaccination programme. This includes replacing the traffic light system with a single red list of countries and territories and simplified travel measures for arrivals from the rest of the world from Monday 4 October. The rules for travel from countries and territories not on the red list will depend on your vaccination status.

The red list will continue to be reviewed every three weeks, unless concerning evidence means we need to act faster to protect public health. At the last review on 17 September, it was decided that Brazil should remain on the red list because of the ongoing presence of variants of concern.

We will not compromise the hard-won progress we have made on our vaccine programme, but the measures we take are important steps in a return to safe and sustainable international travel that can co-exist with an endemic COVID-19.

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