Last Updated on Thursday, 6 August, 2020 at 1:11 pm by Andre Camilleri
Malta is reportedly at risk of being removed from the UK’s travel green list owing to the recent rise in cases of Covid-19.
The news was reported by The Telegraph who, in an analysis piece, said that Malta would be brought to its knees if it were to be removed from the list.
Removal from the green-list would mean that anyone arriving in the UK from Malta would have to spend 14 days in quarantine.
Belgium is the other country being mooted for removal from the UK’s green-list.
Both Malta and Belgium are now ahead of Portugal and Sweden – two countries not on the UK’s safe travel list – in terms of cases against their population size.
The British government are expected to make a decision within the next 24 hours.
The news will come as a major blow for tourism prospects to Malta. The UK is the country’s biggest tourism market and concerted efforts to attract tourists from there had been made when Malta’s airport reopened.
Tourism Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli had made an appearance on the BBC, while the same BBC also featured Malta as the music festival hotspot of 2020.
Fast forward barely two weeks though and all of that may well be about to go up in smoke. The music festivals have been cancelled after a spike in cases of the virus was born out of clusters from mass events and entertainment areas.
With the number of active cases of the virus now at 267, although that number includes over 100 migrants who have no bearing on local transmission due to their isolated upon arrival, Malta’s tourism prospects look bleak.
On Wednesday, Ireland followed the three Baltic states in removing Malta from its safe-travel list owing to the rise in cases.
