Spain's risk rating moves to 'red'

Wednesday 19 August 2020

Islanders travelling back from mainland Spain will now have to enter compulsory quarantine for 14 days upon their return after the country's risk rating moved to red.

The Balearic Islands, Moldova and Iraq also moved from amber to red in the island’s ‘traffic light’ system this morning.

Meanwhile, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago have been reclassified from green to amber. 

Under Jersey's travel guidance system, countries are generally designated green if they have 0-25 cases per 100,000 people, amber for 25-120, and red for more than 120.

Countries are risk-assessed using a range of measures. These include the most recent 14-day case notification rate published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), recent trends in case notification, in-country testing rates, the frequency of travel between Jersey and the country of origin, and Jersey’s testing, tracing and health service capacity.

Spain's latest risk rating increase comes just over three weeks after a spike in the number of covid cases in the country led the Government to classify it as 'amber'.

Passengers arriving from an amber country are required to undertake two PCR tests on day 0 and day 5, and isolate until they receive a negative result from their second test.

Passengers arriving from a red country are required to be tested on arrival and must self-isolate for 14 days.

Yesterday saw another positive case identified as part of arrivals screening.

So far, 27 people have tested positive upon arrival, the majority having come on planes, out of 38,712 passengers.