Health

Spain escapes inclusion on UK’s pandemic red list

London, Aug 4 (EFE).- Spain’s tourism sector breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday as the British government declined to add the Iberian nation to its Covid-19 red list for international travel.

With the incidence of coronavirus variants on the rise in Spain, some tourism operators feared that London would downgrade the country from amber to red.

People arriving in the United Kingdom from red-list countries are required to remain in a “managed quarantine facility” for 10 days at their own expense.

For the time being, people entering the UK from Spain, including the Balearic Islands and Canary Islands, will be exempt from quarantine if they are fully vaccinated, though they must still test negative for Covid-19 before beginning the journey.

The latest guidance urges arrivals from Spain to get the more rigorous PCR test rather than the antigen test prior to departure.

That recommendation reflects both an increase in cases in Spain and the growing volume of people returning to the UK from the country that is the most popular international destination for Britons, officials said.

“UK clinicians and scientists will remain in close contact with their counterparts in Spain to keep abreast of the latest data and picture of cases in Spain,” the government said in a statement.

The Spanish Health Ministry said Wednesday that authorities detected 21,874 new infections in the last 24 hours amid a decline in the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants over past two weeks.

Mexico, Georgia and two French territories in the Indian Ocean, Reunion and Mayotte, drop to the red list, while Austria, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will move to the green list effective Aug. 8.

The government updates the travel lists every three weeks.

More than 73 percent of the UK adult population are fully vaccinated and nearly 89 percent have gotten at least one dose.

EFE

gx/dr

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