UK travel green list: Foreign Office drops advice against travel to some destinations

The UK Foreign Office (FCDO) is no longer advising against non-essential travel to the Canary Islands, five Greek islands, most of Portugal, Malta and Israel.

Recent updates to the government department’s country-specific travel advice say the exemptions are “based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks.”

The Canary Islands include Tenerife, Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura.

Greek islands with exemptions to the do not travel warning are Rhodes, Kos, Zakynthos, Corfu and Crete.

The FCDO still advises against travel to the rest of Spain and Greece, and the autonomous Portuguese archipelago, the Azores.

The US Virgin Islands has also been given an exemption.

International travel for leisure is banned until May 17 at the earliest, but the government is expected to provide an update this week on the countries to be included on the Department for Transport’s ‘green list’ for travel – from where quarantine is not required for arrivals.

A ‘senior industry source’ told The Telegraph that the move did not mean the newly exempted countries and regions would appear on the government’s green list, but said it ‘augured well’ for the reopening of travel this summer.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps has previously hinted that he would support a return of island travel corridors if infection levels were lower than on the countries’ mainlands.

He has also explained the criteria for adding countries to the green list includes the level of coronavirus in a country, the amount of vaccines they have dispensed, the concern over any variant, and the quality of the countries’ data.


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