Malawi, 10 other countries off the UK red list

Britain has announced that it will remove from the red list all 11 countries on the UK's travel red list from 4am on Wednesday.

Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are on the list.

The red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Malawi President who is also chairperson for SADC called the travel restrictions discriminatory as the variant had also been discovered in other non-African countries.

'Despite the omicron variant being detected in over 40 countries, including the US and across Europe, similar travel bans are yet to be imposed against non-African countries. We feel these travel restrictions are discriminatory and unjust,' said Chakwera.

But Britain's Health Secretary Sajid Javid said 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," he told Parliament.

"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 Wednesday morning."