The UK’s health minister Matt Hancock has announced that India
will be added to the UK’s red list from 4am on Friday 23 April.
From the date, anyone who is not a UK or Irish resident, or a British citizen, cannot enter the UK if they have been in India in the previous ten days.
UK and Irish residents and British citizens who’ve been in India in the ten days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for ten days from the time of arrival.
The move follows the identification of 103 cases of Covid in the
UK linked to a new variant first identified in India, the vast majority of
which “have links to international travel and have been picked up by testing at the border”.
Hancock said, “We’ve been analysing samples from these cases, to
see if this variant has any concerning characteristics like greater
transmissibility or resistance to treatments and vaccines meaning it should be
listed as a variant of concern.
“After
studying the data, and on a precautionary basis, we’ve made the difficult but
vital decision to add India to the red list.”
The UK government is launching a traffic light system ahead of the proposed reopening of international travel on 17 May.