Which countries could be next on the green list?

The UK’s first official green list, announced on 10 May and put into effect from 17 May, contained just 12 destinations.

These select few countries, of which British travellers can only feasibly visit a slim handful, are the only places the government currently recommends travelling to on holiday.

As part of the lifting of the blanket recreational travel ban in England, countries were allotted a colour – green, amber or red – and assigned restrictions of varying severity to match.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, Boris Johnson reiterated the government’s position that people should only be holidaying in countries rated green: “It is very, very clear – you should not be going to an amber list country except for some extreme circumstance, such as the serious illness of a family member. You should not be going to an amber list country on holiday.”

At the moment, Portugal is the only mainstream tourism destination on the green list. But which countries might be added to it on the next update? Here’s what we know so far.

Which countries are on the green list right now?

There are 12 places on the green list currently: Ascension Island, Australia, Brunei, the Falkland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Iceland, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

The green list is not reciprocal: many of the locations are closed to British travellers, and others will accept only tourists who have been fully vaccinated. Portugal and Gibraltar are the most obvious holiday candidates letting in Brits with few requirements other than testing; Iceland is only letting in British tourists who can prove they are fully vaccinated.

When will the green list be updated?

The lists will be reviewed every three weeks “from early June” – the first update is expected to take some time place between 1 and 4 June. Any changes will then come into effect a week after the review.

Any amends to the lists will be informed by public health advice, including the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s assessment of the latest data.

“These regular review points will allow the government to balance helping the public to understand Covid requirements when travelling to England while allowing us to constantly evaluate the risk for different countries,” according to the Department for Transport (DfT).

The government will also be publishing a green watchlist in the future, to provide an indication of which countries are at risk from moving from green to amber.

Which countries might be added to the green list?

The transport secretary has confirmed that the green list will expand. When asked on Radio 4’s Today programme whether he was pushing for the green list to be expanded, Grant Shapps replied: “yes of course”.

He added: “We’re reviewing this all the time, every three weeks. The next review is the first week in June and we’ll have to see what happens.”

The first clue for new additions could be found on the Foreign Office (FCDO) advice pages. The FCDO has in place a blanket advisory against all non-essential travel, which it has exempted a number of destinations from. Obviously, most of the green list nations are exempt; but there are also some amber list exemptions, particularly islands that are faring better than their mainland counterparts.

Among these are Spain’s Canary Islands; the Greek islands of Rhodes, Kos, Zante, Corfu and Crete; and Malta. The FCDO says it has lifted its advisory “based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks”, which could mean these destinations meet the criteria to move from amber to green in June.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s data on 14-day case rate per 100,000 inhabitants, a key factor in determining destinations’ colours in the traffic light system, the currently amber EU/EEA countries with the lowest rates include Finland (52.56) and Malta (25.26). The Canary Islands also have a low rate of 20-59.9, as has Mexico, while Morocco has a rate of less than 20. This could mark them out as potential green candidates.

This is just one factor, however, another being the pace of the vaccine rollout. Some of the top contenders here include Bahrain (52 per cent of the population are vaccinated, 40 per cent are fully vaccinated), Chile (49 and 40 per cent), the US (48 and 38 per cent) Malta (58 and 30 per cent) and the Maldives (57 and 28 per cent).

What are the restrictions for travellers returning from green countries?

Green countries come with the lightest restrictions for returning travellers: they must provide a negative Covid test result in order to travel to the UK, and then take a PCR test within two days of arrival. No quarantine is required.