Barbados has added the UK to its list of ‘high risk’ countries, meaning arriving British holidaymakers will be quarantined for up to a week.
New restrictions will be implemented from October 1 after a surge in coronavirus cases in the UK, where another 6,634 infections were recorded yesterday alone.
Tourists will be required to show evidence of a negative Covid-19 PCR test on arrival, or risk being refused entry to the idyllic Caribbean country.
Those who fly in from Britain will be quarantined and monitored for up to seven days at a designated ‘holding hotel or approved villa’ at their own expense, or at a government facility free of charge.
Barbados has added the UK to its list of ‘high risk’ countries, meaning arriving British holidaymakers will be quarantined for up to a week. Pictured: Bathsheba, Barbados
After four or five days, they will be retested and can leave quarantine if they receive a negative result.
Other ‘high risk’ countries include France, Ireland, Switzerland and the US.
Barbados, which reopened its borders to international travel on July 12, is a popular winter sun destination for UK holidaymakers.
The country’s tourism authorities have issued a message to visitors which states: ‘As we welcome you back to our beautiful island there are a number of precautions and safeguards being implemented to protect both locals and visitors.’
Barbados is currently recording a seven-day rate of 1.4 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, while the UK is on 52.1.
Travellers arriving in the UK from Barbados are exempt from the nation’s own coronavirus quarantine policy.
But the 14-day self-isolation requirement will be reimposed on travellers from Denmark, Iceland, Slovakia and the Caribbean island of Curacao from 4am on Saturday due to a rise in cases.
It comes as another 6,634 Covid-19 cases were recorded in the UK yesterday, meaning the seven-day rolling average is 48 per cent higher than it was a week ago.
MailOnline analysis shows this is the fifth consecutive day the average compared to the week before has risen.
Barbados is currently recording a seven-day rate of 1.4 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people, while the UK is on 52.1. Pictured: Rockley beach
Before last Saturday, the weekly coronavirus growth rate had dropped every day for an entire week. It had plummeted from the high of 84 per cent on September 12 to 20 per cent on September 19.
Chief scientific advisors to the Government, Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have terrified the nation by their gloomy prediction that cases may reach 50,000 per day by mid-October, if nothing is done.
They claimed infections were doubling every week, in line with growing outbreaks in Spain and France.
But scientists shot down the claims, warning it was based on old data that relied on just a few hundred positive cases. Even Boris Johnson distanced himself from the claims, saying the outbreak could be doubling up to every 20 days.
Other figures from NHS Test and Trace also suggest cases had dwindled last week. But the newest statistics – released yesterday – only go up until September 16, meaning any spike in the past week has yet to be confirmed in another government dataset.
Department of Health figures show the doubling rate of cases is around two weeks. Almost 5,000 people are being diagnosed with Covid-19 every day at the moment, up from 2,500 on September 10. But this is based on lab-confirmed infections, and thousands of patients won’t ever develop any symptoms.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS), which tracks the size of the outbreak by carrying out thousands of random swab tests, estimates cases have risen 60 per cent in a week to 9,600 a day.
While King’s College London researchers, who are behind a symptom-tracking app, say it has doubled over the same time-frame to around 16,000.