The local authorities will ensure Malta is included in the UK’s next 'green list' of COVID-safe countries for travel, due in a few weeks, the Tourism Ministry told Times of Malta.
The UK’s decision on Friday to omit Malta from the list of COVID-safe countries for travel from England has perplexed many.
Commercial travel for UK citizens will resume on May 17. Contrary to what the British media had predicted, Malta was left out of the UK’s first list of countries that English tourists can freely travel to without having to quarantine on their return.
The ‘green list’ will be reviewed every three weeks, meaning Malta could still be included before the end of May.
The Malta Hotel and Restaurants Association has urged the local authorities to intervene, warning that the omission could deal a blow to a good start to the summer season.
Asked for a reaction, Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo told Times of Malta “the Maltese government, together with the local authorities, will continue working hard to assure that Malta is included in the next review”.
British journalist and broadcaster Simon Calder told Times of Malta that the travel list could be reviewed earlier than in three weeks’ time “as the authorities might realise that they have made a terrible blunder”.
In any case, he said, he was sure that if the review is done in three weeks’ time, “Malta will be reconsidered as safe”.
Calder had predicted that around 30 countries, including Malta, would make the list, but only 12 made it, “the majority of which, such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are irrelevant to UK travellers".
"It is ludicrous. The short-sighted policy to draw the list will largely be regretted. The list announced on Friday shows very little understanding of the tourism industry needs.
“I was very surprised that Malta did not make it, as it has an even stronger case than Portugal. As an island, it is easier to control the situation,” he said.
Green list criteria
The UK’s traffic light system rates countries as red, amber or green, depending on the risk they pose of importing new cases and variants.
The criteria include infection rates, vaccine roll-out, prevalence of variants, genomic sequencing capability and reliability of data.
While Malta fares well and is performing even better than the UK when it comes to vaccine rollout, it had experienced a surge in daily new cases per million people earlier in the year when compared to the other countries in the green list.
See the UK risk assessment methodology here.