Originally Posted by
Dan1113
At what point does Italy, Poland, and Cyprus ban a country / move it to its C list of banned countries? Wondering how much at risk we are with the growing UK numbers. As soon as we hit 30 we'll be on the red list for Denmark so that will be soon
Not all countries use a fixed number. As discussed before, there are several reasons why infection rate numbers can be deceiving. For example some countries are reporting very low numbers because they don't perform many tests, while others may report high numbers simply because they do contact tracing well (which is definitely not a bad thing!). We've seen some rather dubious assessments arise from this. Many countries therefore look at a bigger picture (often in consultations with their embassy in the assessed country) rather than simply using one number to determine their lists.
Another issue that often comes into play is how much disruption would closing the border with that specific country cause. For example, Slovakia keeps Czechia on its green list, even though it reports worse numbers than many red-listed countries. This is because of strong relationship between two countries, with lots of cross-border commuters, students or families. Closing borders would come at a huge cost (economic, social and political). On the other hand, closing border for arrivals from Sweden is easier to do, as it generally only affects holidaymakers (and small number of expats).