As of 4 am UK time on Wednesday the 15th of December, the United Kingdom will remove 11 African countries from their dreaded Red List, including SA.
South Africa (14 December 2021) – Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will be removed from the red list at 4 am on Wednesday morning.
This comes as the UK government held a Covid-19 meeting and deemed the Red List not necessary for the fight against the Omicron variant. However, they are not planning to do away with the Red List as it will be a tool for any future variants that emerge.
“Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad,” he told parliament.
“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4am tomorrow morning.” – Sajid Javid, UK Health Secretary
While most of the world felt the initial reaction was a knee-jerk, we are overjoyed to see that they have changed their tune. Travel is once again allowed without a hotel quarantine period however, you will still be required to have proof of full vaccinations and a recent PCR test.
If you are not fully vaccinated, you are classed as a “Red List” tourist and will be required to take part in the hotel quarantine process.
List Breakdown.
Red list: Pre-departure test, hotel quarantine for 10 days, plus PCR test on days 2 and 8.
Rest of the world: Day 2 test for fully vaccinated travellers. Pre-departure test, quarantine for 10 days, and test on days 2 and 8 for unvaccinated people.
There are a few terms and conditions related to the UK vaccine programme. Should you wish to travel to the UK, you will need to comply with the set rules.
The current approved vaccines are:
- Oxford/AstraZeneca
- Pfizer BioNTech
- Moderna
- Janssen
If you were vaccinated with a 2 dose vaccine (Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech, Oxford AstraZeneca, or a combination of them), you must have had both doses to be considered fully vaccinated.
This applies in all cases, even if you’ve recently recovered from COVID-19 and have natural immunity.
You can find the list with full details related to this update on the UK’s official government website here. The website answers all possible questions related to travel into the UK.
We hope this new ruling will encourage tourists to continue with their planned Festive travel to South Africa.
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