I have criticised Grant Shapps a lot and in my opinion, very fairly due his lack of impetus to change things as the UK has lagged behind the majority of Western countries in allowing safe travel abroad. Finally, I felt like he is trying to make amends by expanding the UK travel corridor again with yet another sleuth of destinations. Sadly we can’t actually go to half of them though….So near Grant and yet so far! And yet Jamaica that was originally on the list and has been consistently low in terms of COVID for a number of weeks is still not back on the list. Apparently, although its cases are 14.9 per 100,000 over the last 7 days the positivity rate is too high and needs to be below 5% to get back on the list.
Here is the current summary of countries:
Thurs: it’s weekly review day and our analysis is showing that #Africa could get its first corridor, with #Rwanda in a healthy position due to infection and death rates as low as #Singapore. We’ve also added #SriLanka to monitor due to stable rates. @ThePCAgency #Commonwealth pic.twitter.com/I63ZG8Dv3V
— Paul Charles (@PPaulCharles) November 19, 2020
This week’s additions are:
- Sri Lanka (closed to non-nationals)
- US Virgin Islands (open – test including PCR, rapid or antibody test within 5 days)
- Israel, (closed to non-nationals)
- Namibia, ( PCR test <72 hours)
- Rwanda, (negative COVID-19 PCR test result taken within 120 hours of departure. You will then be required to quarantine at a designated hotel for 24 hours whilst awaiting the results of a second COVID-19 test, conducted on arrival.
- Uruguay, (closed to non-nationals)
- Bonaire, St Eustatius & Saba, (currently not open to British Nationals for non-essential travel. For St Eustatius, travellers from the UK must stay in mandatory quarantine for 14 days on arrival.) (closed to non-nationals)
- The Northern Mariana Islands
There are some great destinations on the list but not many are open to the UK. There are no direct flights to the US Virgin Island which makes it very tricky to get there.
One place that is worth considering is Namibia. You can fly with Qatar via Doha so no quarantine required. It’s a great country for stunning scenery and good value safaris. You can read a bit more about it here.
Next week we will do a full round-up of all countries on the list that are open to the UK and what their requirements are.
