A passenger wearing a face mask comes through the arrival terminal at Manchester Airport, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Manchester, Britain, June 8, 2020.
London, United Kingdom - People arriving in England from a country not on the list will continue to be required to self-isolate until 14 days have passed since they left it.
Published: Fri 3 Jul 2020, 10:27 PM
Last updated: Sat 4 Jul 2020, 6:07 AM
Visitors to England from 59 countries and territories will not have to go into quarantine from July 10, the British government said on Friday.
The list of exemptions mostly covers Europe -- but not Portugal -- and the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, although the UAE and other Gulf countries are omitted.
The United States and China have also notably been excluded from the list.
People arriving in England from a country not on the list will continue to be required to self-isolate until 14 days have passed since they left it.
The list of countries on the list can be viewed here.
The current UK Foreign Office advice for the UAE is that British people should not travel unless in exceptional circumstances.
However, it is believed that this advice is under constant review and could be updated as things change in the pandemic.
Given that the UAE is normally a winter destination for Britons, the quarantine advice reportedly could be altered once the Gulf's sizzling summer ends.
The changes represent a significant lifting of the mandatory 14-day self-quarantine imposed one month ago to stop new infections from abroad.
Britain has suffered Europe's deadliest outbreak of Covid-19, with 44,000 deaths among confirmed cases, but is now slowly coming out of lockdown.
"Today marks the next step in carefully reopening our great nation," Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said.
Airlines, who had warned the quarantine would cripple an industry already on its knees due to global coronavirus shutdowns, welcomed the easing and three of them dropped a legal challenge.
But the exemptions will only apply to arrivals into England, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so far sticking to the blanket ban.
UK ministers had suggested the delay in announcing the list -- it had been due earlier in the week -- was down to a lack of cooperation from the devolved government in Scotland.
But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon denied this, and blasted Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government in London for a "shambolic" effort.
She said the list her government was shown on Thursday had changed by Friday, while adding that Edinburgh would likely publish its own list in the coming days.
- Airlines withdraw challenge -
Under the new rules, a traffic-light system -- red, amber and green -- would be used for different countries depending on their prevalence of the coronavirus, Shapps said.
Travellers from the green and amber countries will no longer have to self-isolate on arrival.
The amber countries will have reciprocal arrangements in place with England, while the green countries are deemed to be safer than England, such as New Zealand.
The amber countries include France, Italy and Spain, which are among the most popular summer holiday destinations for Britons, although not Portugal.
The United States will be designated with a red light, requiring mandatory self-quarantine, because "they have got very high numbers of infections", Shapps said.
British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair had taken legal action over the scheme they said would have a "severe impact on the travel and tourism industry", which was "already running on fumes".
But their lawyer told the High Court of England and Wales in London on Friday that they had now agreed to withdraw the claim.
In a statement, budget airline easyJet said the list of exemptions was "an important move in the reopening of aviation, to support the wider UK recovery".
Patricia Yates, director of tourism body Visit Britain, said allowing easier entry for overseas visitors would provide "a timely boost".
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