Portugal expected to be on UK’s holiday destination green list

Unrestricted travel to Portugal for holidays and leisure purposes from the United Kingdom should soon get the green light.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Portugal will be on the British government’s green list if the average daily case rate consistently remains below 500 new daily cases.
It means the this summer UK holidaymakers can come to popular tourist destinations like the Algarve, Douro Valley and Madeira and enjoy city breaks in Lisbon and Porto without having to go into quarantine on their return.
Portugal’s inclusion onto the list of “safe destinations” seems probable since the average daily Covid-19 case rate is currently and consistently below 500” states the newspaper.
That rate is well below that registered in the United Kingdom where the average daily infection rate is above 2000.
“Portugal should be on the green list from 17 May,” said Paul Charles, CEO of the travel agency PC Agency.
The fact that it is a country with a low spread of other variants of the virus other than the British variant as well as a low infection rate and an increase in vaccination rollout are all good signs and lie behind the reasoning for this assumption,” he told the Telegraph.
“It is expected that the UK’s green list will include all those countries that have already administered the first dose of a vaccine against Covid-19 to 30% of their populations and it is expected that Portugal will shorty achieve that rate.
“Effectively, Portugal should achieve heard immunity by the start of the summer if the vaccination rate remains high,” said Diogo Serras Lopes, the Portuguese Secretary of State for Health.