Malta at risk of being struck off UK's quarantine-free green list after COVID-19 surge

The decision as to whether Malta will be removed from the UK's quarantine-free green list is expected within the next 24 hours

Malta risks being removed from the UK's green list for travel
Malta risks being removed from the UK's green list for travel

Malta is at risk of being removed from the UK’s quarantine-free green list after a surge in COVID-19 cases.

A decision by the UK government is expected within the next 24 hours when ministers consider the latest data from the Biosecurity centre as part of their weekly review of quarantine.

Malta has recently seen a spike in COVID-19 cases. On Wednesday 20 new cases were registered, half of them related to multiple known clusters and the rest sporadic.

As of now, the number of active cases stands at 249, including 104 migrants who were brought to Malta over the past week.

Both Malta along with Belgium who is also being considered for removal are now ahead of Portugal and Sweden in terms of cases in respect to population size, both of which are excluded from the green list.

Being removed from the green list means arrivals will have to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival in the UK.  

So far, Spain and Luxembourg are the only two other countries to have so far been removed from the UK green list.

On Tuesday Malta was one of the countries removed from Ireland’s green list after its R factor rose exponentially.

Deputy head of the Irish Government, Leo Varadkar said the COVID-19 pandemic was "blazing" around the world and the number of new cases rising again in Europe and the decision was taken to protect the Irish.