UK removes Nigeria, 10 others from red list

The United Kingdom government has removed 11 African countries including Nigeria earlier placed on its travel red list effective Wednesday.

The move followed anger from African countries and retaliation by Nigeria. Many had described it as “travel apartheid”.

Other countries which were on the list were Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant.

However, Health Secretary Sajid Javid told parliament that it had spread so widely the rules no longer had many 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 said.

“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 morning.”