Johnson says 'premature' to speculate countries on Britain's travel green list

PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson has urged patience from holidaymakers and said it would be 'premature' to speculate which countries could be on Britain's 'green list'.

The government is expected to provide an update soon as non-essential international travel is due to resume from May 17 at the earliest under the prime minister's lockdown exit plan.

Earlier the government had unveiled a new traffic lights system by categorising countries under red, amber and green on vaccination levels and caseload of infections.

Travel to green countries will be quarantine-free but passengers will still have to take Covid-19 tests.

While, passengers travelling from red countries will require a stay in hotel quarantine while returning from amber countries will require 10 days of self-isolation at home.

Johnson in a press conference said there is now a need to wait until early May to finalise a list.

"On your very good question about travel, I would love to be able to give you and your readers a clear run down of the countries that we think may be either red, amber or green at this stage.

"We won't be able to do that yet, as we have said the Global Travel Taskforce has reported but what they have said is that we are really going to need to wait until early May before we can set out which countries are on the list.

"You can see some of the troubles and some of the problems that some of our friends are currently having.

"So I think it would be just premature to speculate about that. I am sorry about that, but we will be saying more as soon as we possibly can before May 17," the British prime minister said.

Many travel firm chiefs have slammed government's plans for resuming non-essential international travel and said it lacked detail and there was too much uncertainty.

Moreover, the testing protocol for travel from green countries has drawn criticism, where people have to pay £120 for a RT-PCR test.