All 11 countries on the UK’s travel red list will be removed at 4am on Wednesday, ending the requirement for arrivals from the likes of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria to spend 10 nights in a quarantine hotel at a cost of £2,285.

Ministers accepted the red list was no longer required to protect the UK from the import of the omicron variant as it is already becoming the dominant strain in the UK.

But numerous questions remain regarding the red list, and Britain’s wider travel restrictions.

Will those already in quarantine be released early?

The Government has given no indication that those already completing their sentences in quarantine hotels will be offered an early release. Indeed, anyone arriving on UK soil in the next 12 hours who has visited a red list country in the last 10 days will almost certainly still find themselves bussed to the Heathrow Holiday Inn, or some such depressing edifice. Surely if it is accepted that the policy is pointless after 4am on Tuesday, keeping travellers detained beyond 4am on Tuesday is equally pointless.

Those ordinary people, for the crime of visiting a country in southern Africa, have been charged a minimum of £2,285 and forced to endure quite miserable conditions. We’ve reported on the tiny rooms, cold curries and rude staff found inside these facilities, with the only fresh air and exercise on offer a daily 20-minute stroll around a car park.

What’s more, almost all of these inmates will have already returned negative Covid tests. 

Will any recent inmates get a refund?

Already a legal challenge has been launched against the hotel quarantine policy by Group litigation firm PGMBM, which has described it as a “breach of human rights”. Last week a judge, who concluded there is an “element of choice” for travellers wishing to go to red list countries, blocked the challenge, but an appeal is pending. The Government’s acceptance that the policy is doing nothing to protect the country from omicron may work in favour of the litigators, especially as epidemiologists warned almost immediately after the new variant was identified that travel restrictions would not stop it spreading across borders.

Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, argued: “By the time you close the borders, the variant is already there. Travel bans may have a role in the syndromic (early) phase of an epidemic. But the epidemiologic transition from travel to local transmission happens quickly. Blaming outsiders may be easy, but addressing determinants of local transmission is impactful.”

Will hotel quarantine be used again? 

The red list has been emptied, but it hasn’t been abolished, with ministers choosing to retain the concept (including, presumably, hotel quarantine) in case of future variants. Britain’s embracing of such a draconian last resort is curious, for several reasons. 

Firstly, we didn’t carry out testing on arrivals, let alone quarantine travellers in grim hotels and ban flights from high-risk countries, at the beginning of the pandemic. This fact earned the Government criticism, and one could reasonably argue that we are trying to answer that criticism by imposing arduous – many would say futile – restrictions almost two years on. 

Secondly, we are almost alone in our use of hotel quarantine. Yes, many countries banned direct flights from southern Africa following the emergence of omicron, but they permitted arrivals from those nations to quarantine at home. The only places that continue to utilise hotels for Covid isolation are the likes of New Zealand and Hong Kong, which have done so all along. 

Thirdly, the very existence of the red list, and the threat of hotel quarantine, kills confidence in travel and is hampering the industry’s recovery. Many Britons would rather not run the risk (however small) of being forced to spend 10 days at a hotel in Gatwick, so will stay put. If the Government doesn’t realise this, they should, as holiday firms have been banging on about it for months.

Will testing rules be eased too?

Now the Government has accepted that hotel quarantine, brought in because of omicron, is pointless, it must surely accept that arduous, expensive, industry-destroying testing, brought in because of omicron, is also pointless.

Not yet, it seems. But it could be around the corner. The Treasury, the Department for Transport, the Department of Culture, Media and Science, and the Department of International Trade are all pushing for testing restrictions to be eased. However, the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office are believed to be opposed, so for now they stay.

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said: “Removing these countries from the red list makes complete sense but doesn’t go nearly far enough.

“If the red list isn’t necessary given that omicron is established here at home, then neither are the costly emergency testing and isolation measures imposed on even fully vaccinated travellers, which again put us completely at odds with the rest of Europe.

“The Health Secretary says he wants to act quickly to remove unnecessary restrictions, and we implore him to make good on this by scrapping testing as soon as possible, otherwise the key Christmas and New Year booking period will be fatally undermined.”

The new rules, introduced in response to the emergence of omicron, mean arrivals must take a pre-departure test in the two days before travelling to the UK, as well as a Day 2 test fewer than 48 hours after arriving on UK soil, adding hundreds of pounds to the cost of a family holiday. Furthermore, until they receive the results of the Day 2 test, they must self-isolate.

Will unvaccinated travellers continue to be discriminated against?

Spain responded to the emergence of omicron by banning unvaccinated British tourists, who previously could visit if they presented evidence of a negative test. This was a curious tactic given that the variant has been mostly identified in vaccinated people, and that much of the concern surrounding it was down to the possibility that it could escape the current crop of vaccines.

Britain has for months discriminated against unvaccinated travellers, who must self-isolate at home for 10 days, no matter where they have been, as well as submit to extra testing. This policy might work as a blunt and arguably unethical tool to persuade more people to get vaccinated, but its efficacy as a Covid health measure is less convincing. Indeed, the latest data suggest omicron is as likely to infect the double-vaccinated and the boostered as much as the unjabbed.

Despite this, it seems the world is moving in one direction: restrictions for the unvaccinated. Perhaps the only question is whether they will be temporary or permanent.

Will we learn anything from this experience?

The anger on African soil over the world’s reaction to omicron has been fierce and understandable. Last month, Dr Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance, said: “These travel bans are based in politics, and not in science. It is wrong. Why are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents?”

So don’t expect any gratitude that the red list has finally been emptied.

Outspoken safari guide Paul Goldstein was one of the first to react to today’s news: “I sincerely hope the Government is not expecting any thanks for this. Single-handedly they have destroyed the Christmas/New Year market for much of Africa, as well as butchering confidence in the UK travel industry.”

His feelings are typical. Jarrod Kyte, product and sales director for tour operator Steppes, said: “More than any other industry it would seem that travel is a hostage to our government’s inability to react in a measured way when confronted with the prospect of a new Covid variant. Ineffective restrictions on international travel are hastily imposed, in full knowledge that they risk ‘killing off the travel sector’ [the exact words of Grant Shapps a few weeks ago], yet no effort is made to provide the industry with support or reassurance for the future. Red lists and hotel quarantines are the epitome of breaking a butterfly on the wheel: heavy-handed and largely futile they do far more damage than good yet our government blindly continues in the same vein, propelled by the need to be seen to be doing something.”

One can only hope, should another variant come along, a little more rationality is forthcoming.

“The harm done by our government’s crude policies is far reaching,” continues Mr Kye. “While tourism has created fantastic opportunities for local communities in sub-Saharan Africa, it has also created a dependency which has been cruelly exposed by the pandemic. With little flow of revenue from tourism in the last two years, the win-win model of community based conservation tourism is beginning to show serious fault-lines. If it irrevocably breaks, the implications for wildlife and local economies in Africa will be devastating.”