Italy will be removed from the UK’s travel corridor list as of Sunday 18 October. Vatican City and San Marino have also been removed.
The news means that anyone arriving in the UK after 4am that day from those destinations will be required to go into quarantine for 14 days.
The government said that the data indicated that weekly cases and test positivity are increasing in Italy and so ministers have taken the decision to remove the destinations.
The Greek island of Crete has been added to the government’s travel corridor list following a decrease in confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The government said: "[We have] made consistently clear it will take decisive action if necessary to contain the virus, including removing countries from the travel corridors list rapidly if the public health risk of people returning from a particular country without self-isolating becomes too high.”
Returning travellers who fail to follow the self-isolation rules when returning from non-exempt countries now face fines of up to £10,000.