Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to add Mauritius to the list of islands being considered for the Green List of destinations to which tourists can travel without isolating on return to the UK.

Decisions to place countries on ‘red/amber/green list(s)’ are taken by Ministers informed by evidence, including the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s risk assessments alongside other wider public health factors.

A summary of the methodology used to inform these decisions is published on GOV.UK. The methodology consists of 4 parts: variant assessment; triage; risk assessment; and outcomes that inform ministerial decisions. All countries and territories that pass triage for green or red indicators undergo a more comprehensive risk assessment using additional quantitative and qualitative information (for example, from publicly available platforms such as the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data and the World Health Organization, host government websites, United Kingdom mandatory testing data and travel data), taking into account data availability, limitations and biases.

Available and relevant sources of information for each country or territory are used to provide an overall assessment on genomic surveillance capability, COVID-19 transmission risk and Variant of Concern/Variant Under Investigation transmission risk.