Germany, Italy and Poland among a dozen candidates for UK’s ‘green list’

Nine European countries should be moved from the “amber list” to the “green list” of quarantine-free nations, a leading data analyst claims.

Robert Boyle believes that the key destinations of Germany, Italy and Poland qualify for the UK government’s low-risk category, meaning travellers need not self-isolate on arrival in England.

Austria, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Switzerland are also candidates.

In a blog, Top tips for the next changes to country travel classifications, Mr Boyle also calculates that Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan meet the green list criteria.

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, is due to make the latest moves between “traffic light” categories on Thursday 15 July.

At present only a handful of feasible locations are on the government’s green list. Apart from Gibraltar, the remainder are islands – including Spain’s Balearics, Malta, Madeira, Bermuda, Iceland and several Caribbean nations and territories.

For millions of prospective British travellers who have been fully vaccinated, moves from amber to green are about to become irrelevant: from 19 July, those who have been jabbed by the NHS need not self-isolate on their return to the UK.

But the government excludes anyone who has been vaccinated abroad, whether or not they are British citizens.

The travel industry is desperate for the number of green list locations to increase.

Mr Boyle writes: “Trying to predict what changes to classifications the government is going to make has proven to be something of a mug’s game.

“But armed with a somewhat fuller set of data in advance, I’m going to give it another go.

The writer is former director of strategy for BA’s parent company, IAG. He has “reverse engineered” the UK government’s allocations to try to identify the precise criteria used for quarantine-free status.

He believes the new seven-day case rate must at or below 20 per 100,000 inhabitants; test positivity at 1.5 per cent or less; and a testing rate of one or more per 1,000.

Mr Shapps says that high vaccination rates and genomic sequencing ability are significant factors for green list qualification – while being the location for a big international hub airport is an indication for “red list” status.

Mr Boyle believes that Albania, Bosnia, Hungary, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Romania and Serbia qualify for the green list but are likely to be excluded because of a lack of genomic sequencing.

He notes: “It is undoubtedly the case that travellers from Scotland are a much higher risk to England when it comes to the Delta variant.”

But he is very optimistic about Canada joining the low-risk category, saying: “It is hard to see a better candidate for the green list.

“The Canadian authorities continue to bar entry to Canada to British nationals. But so do Australia and New Zealand, and they are on the green list.”

The red list, requiring hotel quarantine, currently includes the UAE, Turkey and India – all popular locations with strong links to the UK.

The most likely candidate for moving from red to amber, according to Mr Boyle, is Bahrain. He believes Fiji, Indonesia and Sierra Leone could be moved from the medium to the high risk category.

Another Covid data specialist, Tim White, has previously warned that Mexico could be moved from amber to red.

He tweeted: “Mexico’s new Covid-19 figures show an increase of 45 per cent today.

Thankfully the growth is consistent and not getting worse.

“I still don’t think it’s in much danger of red list on Thursday, but in another three weeks it may be.”

Ministers insist all decisions are made on purely scientific grounds, based on advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre.