Two big countries could be removed from the government's travel traffic light system if pressure to have them reclassified pays off.
Representatives speaking for Turkey and Pakistan have urged that they be moved from the red to the amber travel lists at a review expected later today.
Doing so would be a huge boon for people with family and friends in the countries, and those looking for a late summer getaway.
Currently people travelling to the UK from red list countries have to quarantine in a hotel for 11 days, at a cost of more than £2,000.
Double jabbed amber list returnees simply need to take two coronavirus tests.
The Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi and the Conservative MP Rehman Chishti, who lead the all-party parliamentary group on Pakistan, have put pressure on transport secretary, Grant Shapps, to reclassify the nation, the Guardian reports.
They have noted that Pakistan has no variants of concern other than Delta, which is now spread widely across the UK.
Keeping it on the red list was “causing grievous suffering to so many people within the diaspora who have been unable to see family members, particularly parents who are seriously ill, as well as separating spouses and children” they argued.
Pressure is also coming from the Turkish embassy to have it reclassified.
The country has been on the red list since May, meaning getaways to the holiday hotspot are all but out of reach for most Brits unwilling to spend more than £2,000 per person upon their return.
Turkey's embassy in London has been bullish about a possible reclassification from red to amber this week.
"The scientific data on Covid-19 support our expectation that Turkey will be removed from the red list at the upcoming review," the embassy said in a statement.
It cited figures from Our World In Data, which shows that the seven-day rolling average for new cases in Turkey is 232.46, while in the UK it is 464.76.
It also argued that Turkey has improved its genomic sequencing programme and had now fully vaccinated more than half of the population.
If the country is downgraded to amber it would be a huge boost to British tourists, who typically flock there in huge numbers each year.
In 2019 around 2.3million trips from the UK to Turkey were made, with many drawn by the country's scorching weather, blue seas and holiday resorts.
Before you reach for your credit card and book a holiday, it is worth noting that changes to the travel traffic light system are hard to predict.
It is determined by the Joint Biosecurity centre, which looks at a variety of factors including variants in the country, coronavirus case and vaccine rates, how good that country is at genomic sequencing and how good the overall data in the country is.
