Chancellor Rishi Sunak has warned holidaymakers of the risk of travelling abroad during the coronavirus crisis amid concerns France may be the next nation to be added to the quarantine list.

He said on Friday that ministers will "not hesitate" in ordering travellers coming back from countries with high Covid-19 rates to isolate for 14 days, as Belgium, Andorra and The Bahamas lose their exempted status.

Travellers returning to the UK from those three nations from Saturday must enter quarantine, and there are fears those coming back from France could be next with cases there increasing.

Mr Sunak told Sky News: "It's a tricky situation.

"What I can say to people is we're in the midst of a global pandemic and that means there is always the risk of disruption to travel plans and people need to bear that in mind.

"It's the right thing for us to do to keep everything under review on a constant basis talking with our scientists, our medical advisers, and if we need to take action as you've seen overnight we will of course not hesitate to do that and we're doing that to protect people's health."

Earlier Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said rising Covid-19 infection levels in Belgium, Andorra and The Bahamas meant they would be added to the quarantine list.

The measure will come into force in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from 4am on Saturday after they were introduced in Wales from Friday.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office also updated its travel advice to warn against all but essential trips to the three countries.

Brunei and Malaysia have been added to the Government's travel corridor list, following a decrease in confirmed cases of coronavirus, meaning arrivals from these countries no longer need to quarantine.

Figures released on Thursday show Belgium has suffered a consistent increase in cases in recent weeks, rising to 27.8 new cases per 100,000 people.

This towers over the UK's latest rate of 8.4 per 100,000, and is higher than Spain's 27.4 level around the time when the UK introduced travel restrictions there.

Belgium's prime minister, Sophie Wilmes, was last week forced to put a halt to the nation's Covid-19 exit plan by introducing drastic new social distancing measures in the hope of avoiding a new national lockdown.

Contacts outside every household were limited to the same five people for a month, in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

In Andorra, new cases per week have increased five-fold since mid-July, while in The Bahamas the weekly case rate peaked at 78.6 last week, up from 3.1 in the middle of last month.

The UK's move to add Spain onto the quarantine list on July 26 sparked a diplomatic row with the nation and caught out holidaymakers who had already flown over, including Mr Shapps.

It also angered transport bosses who have called for increased testing to reduce the isolation period.