Why is Bangladesh still on UK’s travel “red list”?
There are many British Bangladeshis seeking to travel back to the UK, annoyed at Bangladesh’s continuing inclusion on the UK government’s red list of countries which requires passengers, travelling there, to quarantine for ten days in nominated hotels at their own cost. The cost is £2,285 per person — which for most is unaffordable.
Many are querying why Bangladesh should continue to be on the list when the country’s Covid-19 case numbers appear to be significantly declining.
Another person who also holds strong views on the subject is AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, who says he has raised this issue in two meetings with the UK government — a virtual meeting with the then Foreign Minister Dominic Rabb, and a few days later at the Bangladesh-UK’s fourth strategic dialogue.
At the first meeting, Bangladesh newspapers reported that the Bangladesh foreign minister had told his UK counterpart that:
“Given Bangladesh’s robust vaccine roll-out and significant reductions in coronavirus infection to 9.82% and the sufferings of more than 7,000 British-Bangladeshis currently stranded in Bangladesh, the UK should consider removing Bangladesh from the Covid-19 red-list countries.”
The UK government statement given after the virtual meeting on Deptember 6th does not mention any discussion of the red list, but newspapers report Rabb as stating:
“Britain does appreciate politically the overall pressure on the government regarding red-listing and remains well aware of the decreasing covid infections in Bangladesh, however, such decisions are reviewed by the public health experts on a regular basis.
“I would like to assure that given the longstanding friendship between our two countries, and based on more frequent genomic sequencing data-uploading by Bangladesh, the British government will review the Bangladesh red list.”
However, after the bilateral security meeting three days later on September 9th, Momen’s criticisms have ratcheted up considerably and he has argued that the UK government’s decision not to remove Bangladesh from the red list was due to “political reasons” — though he does not explain exactly what those political reasons may be. He also claims that the UK government’s decision was “unfair” and “discriminat[ory]”, because India was earlier removed from the red list.
Bangladesh’s annoyance at Covid-19 travel bans or quarantine requirements is of course not unique. The ongoing 18-month-long US ban on European citizens travelling into the country has been described as “outdated” by one European ambassador, and as “Kafkaesque” by a UK newspaper. And the decision by the UK government to delay putting India on a red list of countries earlier in the year was criticised harshly for (in fact) being “political”, related allegedly to the UK Government’s desire to have a trading deal with India.
Quite why the UK government would unnecessarily keep Bangladesh on the red list for political (rather than for health/science) reasons remains a mystery. It is being suggested by some in Bangladesh that the UK government is punishing Bangladesh for criticising its recently published Human Rights Report that stated that the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia was under “house arrest”, and summoning the British High Commissioner to convey the government’s views. But such criticism is really small beer, and cannot be credibly believed to have any impact upon a UK government decision about the red list.
In fact, the UK government has set out in some detail the criteria which is taken into account before determining whether a country should be on or off the red list — and in part Bangladesh government only has itself to blame for its continued inclusion.
According to a recent statement by the UK Department of Transport Bangladesh was added to the red list on April 9th, 2021 “because there was evidence to suggest community transmission of variants of concern. UK Government took this decisive action to impose additional measures on Bangladesh to limit the importation of variants of concern and to protect the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.”
Decisions about whether or not a country should remain on the red list relies primarily on risk assessment by UK’s Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC). The Department of Transport statement says that:
“Country allocations to the traffic light system are reviewed every three weeks, unless concerning evidence means we need to act faster to protect public health. At the last review on 26 August, it was decided that Bangladesh should remain on the red list because Bangladesh has low testing and limited sequencing, and as such we cannot be confident what has driven the recent wave in Bangladesh. Without measures, there is a risk of high-risk variants with potential for high public health risk to enter the UK from Bangladesh.” (emphasis added)
As widely noted (and criticised) from early on in the epidemic, the Bangladesh government decided on a policy of low testing. First, it took a long time before allowing private laboratories to be involved in testing, and then in June 2020, the government imposed fees for testing by government laboratories (claiming it wanted to stop “unnecessary” testing). Whilst this could all be put down to poor governance (see BRAC Institute of Governance and Development’s recent report), there has always been a suspicion that the government deliberately sought to reduce testing, so it could minimise the impact of the epidemic in the country on record.
It seems that Bangladesh government’s inadequate testing regime has been a significant reason behind the UK government’s decision to continue to include Bangladesh in the red list — as the UK government does not have the data to understand the real extent of the disease spread in the country.
This may all change soon of course as the UK government will soon be re-assessing the Bangladesh situation (it does so every three weeks and there may well now be sufficient data available to tilt the UK government’s decision in favour of Bangladesh’s removal from the list) and there are also reports that that the number of countries on the red list will be halved.
