PM tells baffled holidaymakers to avoid amber list

Boris Johnson has told Brits they should not be holidaying in any amber list countries, after the government was accused of sowing confusion over its traffic light travel system. 

The PM delivered a firm message: “You should not be going to an amber list country unless for some extreme circumstance such as the serious illness of a family member.”

If people ignore the advice to quarantine upon return they could face fines of up to £10,000, he warned. 

The T&Cs for international travel seem to be in a state of flux. Yesterday morning, George Eustice, the environment secretary, told the public they could travel to amber list countries to see family and friends. By the evening, Lord Bethell, the health minister, was telling people they shouldn’t be travelling at all, even to green list countries. 

Today, the government has been attacked from all sides for its contradictory messaging. But its critics are hoping for different things. 

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, wants the amber light to turn red. Unless the PM is stricter on travel, he “risks allowing more new variants of coronavirus into the country,” he said in the Commons today. 

Meanwhile, the travel industry is up in arms that people are still being told not to visit amber list countries, despite the government finally lifting the ban on international travel on Monday. 

The tightening of travel rules may put further strain on UK-EU relations too. 

EU ambassadors backed plans today to reopen borders to vaccinated British holidaymakers. Yet most European destinations which are heavily dependent on British tourism, such as France, Greece, Spain and Italy, are still confined to the UK’s amber list. 

Not only has the government’s messaging been inconsistent but, according to European health chiefs, there are inconsistencies in how these traffic light lists have been drawn up.

The Spanish and Greek governments are urging the UK to regionalise its green lists. Many of the tourism-dependent islands have infection rates well below the national average and lower than other nations on the government’s green list. 

Portugal, which is on the UK’s green list, has a 14-day infection rate of 49.5 per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, Ibiza’s infection rate has dropped below 26 per 100,000 while Formentera’s sits at just 16.5. 

UK inflation jumps

The UK’s inflation rate has more than doubled in a month, reaching its highest level since the start of the pandemic. 

The consumer prices index for April jumped from 0.7 per cent to 1.5 per cent, according to ONS figures. 

The increase was almost entirely driven by rising energy, clothing and motor fuel costs. 

Builders and plumbers are lamenting the steep cost of raw materials, and petrol prices are at their highest level since January 2020.

The news comes as no great surprise. Lockdowns are deflationary because they forcibly stop us from shopping, travelling and mixing. As restrictions eased and the economy re-opened, allowing consumers to unleash some of their excess savings, inflation was to be expected. 

The figures are modest compared to the US, where consumer prices have leapt by more than 4 per cent. 

But the key question remains: is the spike temporary or is the country entering an inflationary spiral? 

Supply bottlenecks driving a rise in material costs will ease with the removal of pandemic restrictions. But some fear the rising price of raw materials could stunt the recovery and force the Bank of England to raise interest rates. 

At the moment, the Bank is still hopeful that the surge will prove transitory, and inflation will likely slip back in 2022. 

Dr. Google will see you now

Each year there are an astonishing 10 billion or so Google searches for skin, hair and nail issues. Yet studies have shown that people only diagnose themselves correctly about 13 per cent of the time.

To help get under the skin of these problems, Google has unveiled a new AI-powered health tool that will assist users in self-diagnosing hundreds of skin, hair and nail conditions.

The “dermatology assist tool”, unveiled at the tech giant’s annual developer conference, will launch later this year.

The breakthrough development uses artificial intelligence to analyse images uploaded by the user and is able to spot 288 conditions, ranging from acne to melanoma.

Google has been working on this for three years, and the new tool has been trained on a dataset of 65,000 images of diagnosed conditions.

The service is free but, as you might expect, users have to sign into their Google accounts to upload the image. Of course you do.

Caitlin Allen,
Reaction Reporter