Final predictions for the second iteration of the UK’s green and red lists

I have it on good authority that the UK government will definitely be making a statement tomorrow about revisions to the UK’s traffic light travel classifications. The announcement could be just a delayed decision, to allow more time to assess the data. But I think that is not likely.

So, ahead of the announcement, I’ve done a quick update of my predictions using the latest data, building on the analysis I did in this earlier post.

Candidates for going green

As per my previous prediction, I still think Malta, Finland and Slovakia are fairly safe bets, based on high testing rates and low reported cases. It still seems very likely that whilst Spain and Greece will not make it onto the green list, many of their islands will, due to lower case rates and higher vaccinations than on the mainland.

I do have some doubts about Slovakia, as the case rates reported by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control are higher than the figures shown in Our World in Data (OWID), the source I’ve been using. That would make it more of a borderline case. The government claims it is using OWID data to support its decisions, so I’ll stick with my prediction.

There are eight European countries that are more marginal candidates (Czechia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Cyprus and Luxembourg). Whether they qualify for green status depends on the exact threshold the UK is using and what date cutoff they used for the data supporting the decision. With the exception of Luxembourg, the infection rate in all of these countries has been falling recently, as shown in the chart below. On the basis of the latest data, they would be below the EU threshold of 100 cases in a two week period per 100,000, equivalent to 71 cases per million. In several cases, they would be below the case rate in Portugal, which made it onto the green list last time round.

It is interesting to note that case rates in Portugal have been creeping up, so if a really strict threshold is used, maybe even Portugal wouldn’t make the green list now, if it wasn’t already there.

Update: A clarification

Based on feedback to this post, a number of people queried why I didn’t include Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as candidates for green. Their reported case rates definitely make that a possibility. I left them off the list because of low levels of testing, one of the criteria highlighted by the government as important for getting green status. But it is hard to know what “good enough” is where testing is concerned. So perhaps they will find their way onto the list, if not at this announcement, then three weeks later.

Waiting for Biden

Case rates in the United States have continued to fall and the latest rate is almost identical to that of Portugal. The country should therefore logically be on the green list and perhaps we will see that tomorrow. However, it seems most likely that this will have to wait until the US reopens its border to UK citizens. I would have said that should be very soon, but the fast growth of the Delta/India variant in the UK may have delayed this.

Candidates for going red

I previously predicted four countries as candidates for being added to the red list, based purely on the very high infection rates. They are Bahrain, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago and Kuwait and I see no reason to change my view that they ought to be on the list. I will acknowledge that other than in Bahrain, where the cases have been spiking recently, things are no worse than they were four weeks ago when they were left on the amber list. It seems like an anomaly to me though.

I’ve also taken a closer look at whether there are any “variant of concern” reasons to put any other countries onto the red list.

Since my last post, we’ve had news of a scary sounding variant emerging in Vietnam. That country has a low reported case rate, but also has very low testing, so it is hard to be confident of that. Since there aren’t any flights at the moment between Vietnam and the UK, it might not be considered a high priority. But I think I’d add it to the red list on a precautionary basis.

Finally, there are three countries currently on the amber list with relatively high infection rates and a significant share of cases reported to be down to the Delta / India variant, according to data from GISAID. Although that variant is rapidly becoming the dominant strain in the UK, I assume that the government is still worried about importing any more of it. Those countries are Georgia (33% of cases), Malaysia (25% of cases) and Iran (33% of cases).

Any possible red to amber moves?

A question I didn’t specifically address in my last post was whether any countries might move from the red list to amber, with Turkey the one of most interest to would-be holiday-makers. Infection rates in Turkey have been falling rapidly in recent weeks and the reported rate is now no worse than Spain.

So, logically, it should move to amber. I can’t quite bring myself to predict that though. Turkish Airlines has consistently operated the biggest programme of flights in Europe during the pandemic and has a massive hub in Istanbul connecting Europe to parts of the world that the government still considers to be shark-infested waters. So I suspect that the UK will use the same logic that causes it to classify the UAE and Qatar as red, due to their role as major transit hubs. Whether the logic makes any sense or not is another thing, since people can transfer as easily via Frankfurt, Paris or Amsterdam. In any event, with the government taking a cautious approach, I suspect that Turkey may need to wait until the next review before it is moved to the amber list.

There are some other countries on the red list where the logic for them being there is far from clear to me. Presumably the government’s advisors had some concern about the quality of the data, or perhaps there is a political reason. But other than Turkey, I can’t find any where the situation has changed markedly in the last four weeks to justify a change.

Summary predictions

For airlines and people keen to travel, the best case scenario would be for moves to green for the United States and eleven European countries, of which Cyprus, Malta and Italy would be the most significant in terms of leisure travel. The Spanish and Greek islands could well join that list. In this “best case” scenario, Turkey would also move from red to amber.

I don’t expect the green list additions to be as long as this though. The government has been trying to manage down expectations and clearly wants to be seen to be taking a cautious approach. However, unless trends reverse, I’d expect to see all of these changes in the following review in three weeks time, for travel from the end of June.

In the short term, we are much more likely to see something closer to the worst case scenario of Malta, Finland and some Spanish and Greek islands “going green”, with other countries having to wait for now.

Predicting additions to the red list is much harder, as the logic for the existing list has not been well explained. From what I can see, there is a case for up to eight new reds, although I doubt it will be that many. Probably it will be more like one or two, with Bahrain and Vietnam seeming the most likely to me.