COVID-19: Quarantine-free travel to amber list countries for the fully vaccinated

July 2021 | Reading time: 3 minutes

From 19 July, fully vaccinated residents of the UK will no longer need to self-isolate on returning from amber list countries.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps also stated that quarantine would also be exempt for under-18s returning from amber list countries.

Shapps emphasized that travellers can only be exempted from self-isolating if they have had both the jabs and fourteen days have passed since the final dose.

Furthermore, it has been established that only UK residents who have received vaccines provided by the NHS will benefit from the new exemption rule.

Shapps added that they are working on extending the ‘approach to vaccinated passengers from important markets and holiday destinations, later this summer, such as the United States and the EU’.

Until such an implementation is in place, only travellers who have had the NHS vaccines will be exempted from quarantine after returning from amber list countries.

However, fully vaccinated and under-18 travellers will still need to undergo PCR tests before and after they return to the UK. Under the new rules, fully vaccinated amber list country returnees will need to take a PCR test three days before their coming back to the UK and another test on Day 2 of their return. The Day 8 testing requirement will also be dropped.

Essentially, the travel requirements of the green list and amber list countries will become the same for fully vaccinated people under the new rule.

Shapps said, ‘I don’t underestimate for a second just how difficult the last 16 months have been for those who have not been able to travel to see their families, and the tourism and for the aviation sector itself, of course, and no minister, let alone transport secretary, would want to ever curtail freedom and ask people not to travel.

‘Protecting public health has rightly been and will continue to be our overriding priority of this government, and that’s why we introduced some of the toughest border measures in the world. But we are now, thanks to our brilliant vaccination programme, in a position where we can start to think about how we live with coronavirus while returning life to a sense of normality.’

Presently, everyone arriving in the UK from the amber list and red list countries must self-isolate for ten days regardless of their vaccination status. Returnees of green list countries do not have quarantine obligations.

Less than 30 countries make up the green list, whereas there are around 140 countries in the amber list, which include some of the more popular holiday destinations like Greece and mainland Spain.

However, the procedures for returning from red list countries will maintain the requirement for hotel quarantines and PCR tests on Day 2 and Day 8.

Green and Amber PCR Test packages are available from our store.