The remaining seven countries on England's COVID-19 travel red list will be removed from next Monday, BBC reported. Fully-vaccinated arrivals from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Haiti and Venezuela will no longer have to quarantine in a hotel. But the red list system will be kept in place and a country could be added back on it if cases rise there. The transport secretary Grant Shapps said it was a "great boost for travel and all those people employed in the travel sector". Shapps added: "We have been able to do this now because the variants of concern that we have been tracking are no longer of concern to the chief medical officers." The Department for Transport (DfT) said "Delta is now the dominant variant in most countries around the world. This means the risk of known variants entering the UK has reduced and the government can confidently remove these seven destinations from the red list." More countries are also being added to a list of nations and territories whose COVID vaccinations are recognised by the UK, taking it to more than 135 locations in total. Scotland and Wales have confirmed the changes - which come into effect at 04:00 BST on Monday - will also apply to passengers arriving in those nations. No announcement has been made by the devolved administration in Northern Ireland, but in recent months it has also followed the Department for Transport's changes. The DfT said the red list would be reviewed every three weeks, with data for all countries, including the emergence of new variants, monitored in case countries needed to be added back on. Shapps said the red list system itself would be reviewed again in the new year but it was "prudent" for the government to keep several hundred hotel rooms available on "standby". "We don't want to re-set up a system from scratch if a particular concern was seen in a particular country and we wanted to be able to have quarantine as a mandatory facility," he said.
