The government of the United Kingdom has commenced a process of delisting Nigeria and 10 other countries from the UK’s travel red list from 4am on Wednesday.
The red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant.
Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are on the list.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid told the parliament that it had spread so widely the rules no longer had much purpose.
“Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad.
“Whilst we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4am tomorrow morning.”