WHILE holiday hotspots such as Thailand and Mexico remain on the red list, a recent study has found that they are SAFER than the UK when it come to catching Covid.
Despite the traffic light system being scrapped last week, removing the green and amber list, the red list is still in place for more than 50 countries.
Turkey, Egypt and the Maldives were removed from it, but Thailand and Mexico are some of the popular countries for Brits which are still on the list.
However, recent figures from the NHS Test and Trace found positive Covid cases from people in the red list quarantine hotels were just 0.77 per cent this month, compared to the UK positive rate at 1.14 per cent.
The low cases in the hotel quarantines mean that Brits returning from the red list countries are reporting positive tests results far less than if they were in the UK.
This could further prove the need to scrap the red list, which requires families to pay £2,285 each to quarantine for 10 days at a hotel, with travel experts warning that it is no longer needed.
The red list quarantine rules were initially introduced to prevent the spread of new Covid variants in the UK, although the current results show only the Delta variant – which is already prevalent in the UK.
Suzanne Lugthart, who analysed the data, said: "The forced imprisonment of the healthy in quarantine hotels is one of the least scientific and most heinous political interventions seen during the pandemic in the name of public health."
She said that the data shows the scheme achieves "precisely nothing," adding: "The people incarcerated in English quarantine hotels at huge cost to their bank balances and mental health are less likely to test positive for Covid than the population at large for the fourth week in a row."
Ireland's Health Minister Stephen Donnelly announced on Saturday that all of the countries on the list which required the quarantine were removed, ending the hotel scheme, due to the diminishing threat of the Delta variant.
It is hoped that the UK could follow suit, with the Department for Transport (DfT) understood to back the move, according to the Telegraph.
A travel industry expert told the Telegraph that the UK is an "outlier" for arrivals testing, and warned that it was a "a policy of its time but things have moved on".
New rules being introduced next week will also reduce the testing restrictions for vaccinated Brits returning to the UK.
A pre-arrival test will no longer be needed from October 4, while the day two PCR test will be replaced with a lateral flow test later next month.
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