South Africa and the 10 other southern African countries have been removed from the UK’s red list from 4am today (15 December).
Speaking yesterday in the House of Commons, health secretary Sajid Javid said: “We won’t keep measures in place for a moment longer than we need to.
“For example, 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.
“So I can announce today that while 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.”
There are now no countries left on the red list, which means hotel quarantine is no longer necessary for any arrivals into the UK.
The countries removed from the list are: South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
