Italy reopens airport as it enters final phase of lockdown easing
● Families able to reunite but normality remains a long way off
Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport sprang back to life as Italy opened regional and international borders in the final phase of easing its long Covid-19 lockdown, but it was still an open question how other nations would accept Italian visitors.
Families and loved ones separated by the global pandemic could finally reunite but normality was a long way off.
Italy is the first European country to fully open its international borders, dropping the 14-day quarantine requirement for visitors.
But most European nations see Italy’s move, which aims to boost its collapsed yet critical tourism industry, as premature.
Many of them are moving to open only on June 15 and some even much later than that.
Who gets to go where in Europe this summer is shaping up to be determined by where you live, what passport you carry and how hard hit your region has been during the pandemic.
At Rome’s international airport, Andrea Monti embraced his girlfriend, Katherina Scherf, in an emotional reunion as she arrived from Dusseldorf, Germany. “We haven’t seen each other since before the pandemic,” Mr Monti said.
Still, the airport remained lightly used even though Italy’s national holiday on Tuesday normally kicks off the summer domestic tourism season.
It was scheduled to handle several thousand passengers on Wednesday, compared to 110,00 passengers on the same day last year.
Italy also resumed highspeed train service between regions for the first time since the lockdown in early March, checking departing passengers’ temperatures as they accessed the tracks.
Europe-wide, rules on crossborder travel were a patchwork of regulations if not a complete mishmash.
Germany said it plans to lift a travel warning for European countries from June 15 but it may still advise against travel in some cases, for example to Britain if quarantine rules there remain. Germany issued a warning against all nonessential foreign travel in March.
The aim is to change that for Germany’s 26 European Union partners, other countries outside the EU that are part of Europe’s passport-free Schengen travel area, and Britain.
Austria said it is ending border checks with all its neighbours except for Italy, due to lingering concerns about coronavirus infections there, particularly hard-hit Lombardy.
Italy’s neighbour, France, also is looking at opening its borders on June 15 - although French citizens who cross over in the meantime are no longer subject to quarantines upon their return.
Coronavirus has infected more than six million people across the world and killed more than 370,000, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Spanish legislators have voted to extend for two additional weeks the state of emergency that allows the government to restrict movement and other rights as part of its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says Spain has “overcome the worst of the pandemic” and declared that he will not seek further extensions beyond the end date of the special powers at midnight on June 21.
The Chinese city of Wuhan has tested nearly all of its 11 million citizens for coronavirus in a mass effort that resulted in the isolation of 300 people, authorities said.
The pandemic is believed to have originated last year in the industrial city that went under lockdown for 76 days to try to stop the outbreak. Wuhan still accounts for most of China’s 83,021 cases and 4,634 deaths from the disease. The testing effort targeted every resident not already tested and excluded only children under six.