The United Kingdom says it will remove Nigeria and other 10 African countries from its Redlist on Wednesday, December 15.
The countries on the list are Nigeria, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia, Eswatini, and Zimbabwe.
The redlist was introduced in November following the emergence of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
Speaking at the UK parliament on Tuesday, Sajid Javid, UK health secretary, said the Omicron variant “has spread so widely across the world , ” hence the travel red list is now “less effective”.
He said the Omicron variant had spread so widely that the rules no longer had much purposes.
“Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad,” he told parliament.
“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 am tomorrow.”
