Cyprus removed from UK's travel corridor

The British government has taken Cyprus off the list of travel exemptions, requiring travelers flying back from the island to the UK to self isolate for two weeks.

According to the British Department of Transport, people arriving into the UK from Cyprus will need to self-isolate for 2 weeks after the end of this week.

The new travel restrictions, which also include Lithuania, take effect on Sunday morning at 4am (6am Cypriot time), as both destination countries will no longer be part of a "safe" travel corridor.

The transport department said a range of factors are taken into account when deciding to remove a country from the exemption list, including the "continued increase of coronavirus within a country, the numbers of new cases, information on a country’s testing capacity, testing regime and test positivity rate and potential trajectory of the disease in the coming weeks."

There has been a consistent increase in COVID-19 cases per 100,000 of the population in Cyprus over the last 2 weeks, with a 79% increase in total cases over this time period.

Greek Cypriot media reported that from 11 to 24 October, 1374 cases of coronavirus were diagnosed in the Republic of Cyprus, amounting to a whopping 40.5% of total cases recorded until October 24, according to information out together by the state's Epidemiological Surveillance Unit.