Scotland includes Madeira, Azores in ‘safe travel corridor’

Scotland will stop forcing people arriving from Madeira and the Azores to go into quarantine for 14 days, but maintains the measure on mainland Portugal, the authorities announced.

The measure will apply from 04:00 on Saturday and will align Scotland with the other nations of the United Kingdom, namely England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which had already differentiated the Portuguese islands from the mainland in terms of travel restrictions.

In the meantime, all the different regions of the UK have decided this week to exclude Poland, Turkey and the Dutch Antilles islands of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba from the list of safe destinations, so that travellers arriving there will have to be quarantined on Saturday.

Offenders incur fines of up to £10,000 (€11,000).

The Scottish authorities had decreed that people arriving from Portugal and the islands must be quarantined on 5 September.

Wales was the first British region to differentiate between Madeira and the Azores, where the number of infections has been reduced, and mainland Portugal, where there has been an increase in cases.

The British government has mirrored this approach since 12 September, claiming that more detailed information allowed the islands to be assessed separately from the mainland and started to set up “regional travel corridors”.

One of the main criteria for exclusion from the list of safe destinations is when the country registers more than 20 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over a week.

This week’s update of the list of countries and territories with ‘travel corridors’ for the United Kingdom, i.e. exempt from quarantine on arrival, leaves the British with only six destinations without travel restrictions as most, including Madeira and the Azores, require negative tests or a period of confinement.

These destinations are Italy, Greece, Sweden, Germany, Gibraltar and San Marino.