Britain will soon classify travel destinations to gradually allow international travel to resume from May 17. As per the reports, countries will be classified as red, amber, and green categories in a new traffic light system based on COVID-19 risks.

Revealing more about how this category system can help people to travel this summer, the UK Government’s Global Travel Taskforce stated that work is in progress to develop the certification system, for inbound and outbound travel.

Britain imposed strict lockdown during winters, prompted by a huge spike in Coronavirus cases and deaths. However, it is now gradually emerging from that situation.

Reportedly, COVID case numbers have now dropped dramatically and, as of now, one of the top priorities of the UK government is to avoid undermining the success of vaccination programmes.

Referring to this, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps stated that the framework will help them to reopen travel safely and sustainably.

UK to classify travel destinations as Red, Amber, and Green

Reports have it that travel companies, airlines, and others are eager to plan their summer holidays, and have been putting pressure on the government to explain what the rules would be.

Now, under the new traffic light system, restrictions such as home and hotel quarantine, and compulsory COVID tests will apply differently on different states, depending on which category of country a passenger is coming from.

Factors that will be taken into account for assessing which category a country should fall into will include the rate of infection, percentage of population being vaccinated, prevalence of COVID variants, as well as the country’s access to reliable genomic sequencing.

For classifying, there will be a ‘green watchlist’ that will identify which countries are at most risk, then moving from green to amber. Referring to this, the government stated that it would not hesitate to change the category of a country at short notice, in case the data shows risk had increased.

The taskforce also recommended removing the condition ‘permission to travel form’, which means passengers would now no longer need to prove that they have a valid reason for leaving Britain.