The current traffic light system will be replaced by a single red list of countries and territories which will continue to be crucial in order to protect public health, and simplified travel measures for arrivals from the rest of the world from Monday 4 October at 4am. The rules for red countries remain as before.
New rules apply if an arrival is recognised by the UK as fully vaccinated. For these purposes, from 4 October, fully vaccinated means you have received all necessary doses of a vaccine in the UK, or UK vaccine programme overseas with the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen vaccines (or formulations of the vaccines in the relevent countries such as AstraZeneca Covishielf) in the EU, Andorra, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Vatican City State, the US, Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Dominica, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan or the UAE
Arrivals must have had a complete course of a recognised vaccine at least 14 days before arriving in England.
Under these new rules, fully vaccinated arrivals from countries not on the red list will have to take a day 2 test, with no requirement to isolate unless positive. They will not be required to take a Pre-Departure Test or a day 8 test. All positive, viable, day 2 tests will be sequenced.
If an arrival originates from a country not on the red list, but is not fully vaccinated according to the above criteria, they will have to take day 2 and day 8 tests, and isolate as per the current process from non-vaccinated arrivals from amber list countries. Test to release will remain an option for these arrivals. For more information on all of these changes, please see here.