Spain at risk of joining France in ‘amber plus’ category, necessitating quarantine

‘There’s a lot of factors that are involved in the decisions that are taken around travel,’ says minister

Spain could be at risk of joining France in the government’s new “amber plus” category for travel, necessitating quarantine for returning travellers even if they’re fully vaccinated.

From 19 July, double jabbed Britons who’ve had their second dose at least two weeks prior and accompanying under-18s can swerve quarantine when entering Britain from amber list destinations.

But France was classified as an exception to the rule relaxation over fears about the beta virus variant. Arrivals from there are still subject to the former restrictions: 10 days of self-isolation and two PCR tests.

There are now concerns that Spain could be added to this new category after data revealed that 9.3 per cent of Spain’s Covid cases in the last month were the beta variant, which originated in South Africa.

This is almost double the percentage found in France over the same period – 3.7 per cent, according to the Gisaid research centre.

When asked whether Spain could potentially be the next victim of “amber plus”, business minister Paul Scully said decisions were being “taken at Cabinet level”.

“They'll look at the data, and they'll make sure that they can work out what is best to make sure that we keep transmission of the virus low, we keep the transmission of the variants low, because it's the variants that are really key here to work out how they're interacting with our vaccine programme,“ he told Sky News.

“We try and give people as much data as we can but it's not just about the pure numbers.

”It's also about the variants, and the style of variants, the beta variant, for example, that's quite prevalent in France at the moment, we're looking at how that interacts with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“There's a lot of factors that are involved in the decisions that are taken around travel.”

If Spain were to be exempt from the loosening of restrictions, it would undoubtedly be another major blow to the travel industry.

Spain is the most popular destination for British holidaymakers, with around 18.1 million visits made in 2019.