The Manx government says it will follow the same rules as the UK over the new Covid travel ’red list’.

The changes for the UK will come into effect on Monday, October 4, at 4am.

From that date, countries will no longer be divided into green, amber or red lists. Instead, the amber and green lists will merge into a ’Rest of World’ (ROW) list.

Until October 4, residents who have been outside the common travel area (the UK, Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) in the preceding 10 days will still have to follow two pathways.

Those who have been to amber countries will still have to undertake the ’seven-day pathway’ and those who have been to red countries will still have to follow United Kingdom travel requirements before onward travel to the Isle of Man.

A spokesperson told the Examiner that the Isle of Man government would be looking at the detail of what the UK is proposing in October to determine what changes may be needed here with regards to these pathways.

Once that is understood, any proposed changes would be considered by the Council of Ministers.

The rules are expected to vary slightly between each UK nation, but for England the changes are as follows:

Anyone in a country on this list who is fully vaccinated will no longer have to take a PCR test three days before travelling to England.

They will still need to take a PCR test two days after arrival, but this will be replaced by a cheaper and simpler lateral flow test later in October.

There will still be a red list of countries. Visitors to these countries will have to spend 11 nights in a quarantine hotel, at a cost of £2,285 for solo travellers.

Before the move to the two-tier system, eight countries are to be removed from the red list (from September 22).

They are Turkey, Pakistan, The Maldives, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Oman, Bangladesh and Kenya.

This news from England comes after border controls in the island were eased last Thursday (September 16).

There are no longer any testing or isolation requirements for Isle of Man residents when they return from travel from within the common travel area, regardless of vaccination status.

The current advice from the government continues to be not to travel to red list countries or territories.

As the Isle of Man Examiner went to press yesterday (Monday), there were five people in hospital in the island with Covid-19. Nobody is in intensive care.

This brings the total number of cases in the island to 195.