Europe’s borders reopen for a summer ‘unlike any other’
BORDERS have opened up across Europe after three months of coronavirus closures that began so chaotically in March.
But many restrictions persist, it is unclear how keen Europeans will be to travel this summer and the continent is still closed to Americans, Asians and other international tourists.
Border checks for most Europeans were dropped overnight on Sunday in Germany, France and elsewhere, nearly two weeks after Italy opened its frontiers.
The European Union’s 27 nations, as well as those in the Schengen passport-free travel area, which also includes a few non-EU nations such as Switzerland, are not expected to start opening to visitors from outside the continent until at least the beginning of next month, and possibly much later.
Announcing yesterday’s reopening of borders and Paris restaurants, French president Emmanuel Macron said it is time “to turn the page of the first act of the crisis” and “rediscover our taste for freedom”.
But he warned: “This doesn’t mean the virus has disappeared and we can totally let down our guard . ... The summer of 2020 will be a summer unlike any other.”
Even inside Europe, there is caution after more than 182,000 viruslinked deaths.
Europe has had more than two million of the world’s 7.9 million confirmed infections, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
“We have got the pandemic under control, [but] the reopening of our frontiers is a critical moment,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday as he announced that his hard-hit country is moving forward its opening to European travellers by 10 days to June 21.
“The threat is still real. The virus is still out there,” he said.
Still, the need to get Europe’s tourism industry up and running again is also urgent for countries such as Spain and Greece as the economic fallout of the crisis multiplies.
Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged that “a lot will depend on whether people feel comfortable to travel and whether we can project Greece as a safe destination”.
In a trial run, Spain allowed thousands of Germans to fly to its Balearic Islands starting yesterday – waiving its 14-day quarantine for the group. The idea is to test out best practices in the coronavirus era.
“This pilot programme will help us learn a lot for what lies ahead in the coming months,” Mr Sanchez said.
“We want our country, which is already known as a world-class tourist destination, to be recognised as also a secure destination.”
Europe’s reopening is not a repeat of the chaotic free-for-all in March, when panicked, unco-ordinated border closures caused traffic jams that stretched for miles.
Still, it is a complicated, shifting patchwork of different rules, and not everyone is equally free to travel everywhere.
Several countries are not opening up yet to those hard hit in the crisis.
Switzerland is still keeping its border with Italy closed, and Norway is doing the same with Sweden, whose virus strategy avoided a lockdown but produced a relatively high per capita death rate.
Britain, which left the EU in January but remains closely aligned with the bloc until the end of this year, only last week imposed a 14-day quarantine requirement for most arrivals, horrifying its tourism and aviation industries.
As a result, France is asking people coming from Britain to self-quarantine for two weeks and several other nations are not even letting British tourists come in during the first wave of reopenings.
With flights only gradually picking up, nervousness about new outbreaks abroad, uncertainty about social distancing at tourist venues and many people facing record unemployment or pay cuts, many Europeans may choose simply to stay home or explore their own countries.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz are both planning to holiday in their homelands this year.
“The recommendation is still, if you want to be really safe, a holiday in Austria,” Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg told ORF television, recalling the scramble in March to bring home thousands of tourists as borders slammed shut.
“In Austria, you know that you don’t have to cross a border if you want to get home, and you know the infrastructure and the health system well,” he said.
The German government, which helped fly 240,000 people home as the pandemic grew exponentially, also has no desire to repeat that experience.
“My appeal to all those who travel – enjoy your summer holiday, but enjoy it with caution and responsibility,” German foreign minister Heiko Maas said.
“In the summer holidays, we want to make it as difficult as possible for the virus to spread again in Europe.”
Meanwhile, furtherr afield, China’s capital is braced for a resurgence of coronavirus after more than 100 new cases were reported in recent days in a city that had not seen a case of local transmission in more than a month.
China, where the virus first appeared late last year, reported 49 new coronavirus cases yesterday, 36 of them in Beijing.
All have been traced to a wholesale market that supplies much of the city’s meat and vegetables.
Beijing has closed the Xinfadi market, ordered testing of all its workers and is requiring anyone who travelled there to self-isolate for two weeks.
Chinese health authorities said the strain of virus was similar to that seen in Europe, but there was no immediate evidence of a connection.
In response, Beijing has suspend
ed the restart of some classes and reversed the relaxation of some social isolation measures.
Neighbourhoods close to the market have been put on lockdown and more than 76,000 people tested.
China’s authoritarian communist political system and tight social controls enable tracking of residents’ movements through the use of social media.
Entry to office buildings and grocery stores requires proof on a smartphone that the person has not travelled to areas where the virus is still active.
India’s health ministry reported a jump of more than 11,000 new infections nationwide for a third consecutive day yesterday.
The country’s home minister offered 500 train carriages for use as makeshift coronavirus hospital wards as New Delhi struggles to contain a spike in cases.
The Indian capital has about 9,000 beds dedicated to Covid-19 patients in public and private hospitals, but a state government panel of experts has said it will need at least 15,000 beds by the end of June.
Pakistan’s upward spiral of new virus infections neared 145,000 yesterday amid warnings from political leaders that the numbers could double by the end of June and were likely to hit a stunning 1.2 million by the end of July if Pakistan’s 220 million people continue to flout basic precautions such as mask-wearing.
In the US, cases in nearly half of states are rising.
The US has already recorded more than two million confirmed coronavirus cases and upward of 115,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Upset by “rampant” violations of New York’s pandemic-fighting restrictions, governor Andrew Cuomo threatened to reinstate closings in areas where local governments fail to enforce the rules.
Manhattan and Long Island’s Hamptons were singled out as problem areas by Mr Cuomo, who cited 25,000 complaints statewide of reopening violations.
The large gatherings, social-distancing violations and lax face-covering enforcement endanger the state’s fragile progress in the fight against coronavirus, Mr Cuomo said, adding that many complaints involve bars and restaurants.
“We are not kidding around with this. You’re talking about jeopardising people’s lives,” Mr Cuomo said.
New York officials are trying to avoid the fate of states seeing a surge in new cases after reopening.
New York’s coronavirus-related hospital admissions are declining and the state recorded 23 deaths on Saturday, the lowest one-day coronavirus death toll since the early days of the crisis.
Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed America’s lack of centralised authority for its inability to stem the spread of the virus, while saying Russia was “working quite steadily and getting out of this situation... with minimal losses”.
In the US, “this is not happening”, Mr Putin said, noting the central and regional governments work more closely in Russia.
Russia, nevertheless, has recorded more than half a million infections and nearly 7,000 virus deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University count.
South Korea is also among countries seeking to prevent a resurgence of the outbreak, reporting 37 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said 25 of the cases came from the Seoul area, where health authorities are scrambling to trace infections linked to entertainment and leisure activities, church gatherings, warehouse workers and door-to-door sellers.
In Peru, a Catholic Mass was held for the thousands who have died in the pandemic that is burning across Peru and South America as a whole.
Archbishop Carlos Castillo used his broadcast homily to criticise a health system he said “is based on egotism and on business and not on mercy and solidarity with the people”.
Covid-19 has taken at least 6,400 lives in the nation of some 32 million people – a toll second only to that of Brazil within South America.
In France, restaurants in the Paris region were allowed to join those in the rest of the country in opening indoor seating yesterday.
From June 22, all nursery schools, primary schools and junior high schools will be open and mandatory for all students.
France will start allowing visitors from other continents on July 1.
In Africa, where the virus continues to spread, Ghana’s health minister Kwaku Agyemang-Manu has contracted Covid-19 and is undergoing treatment in hospital.
Ghana has one of the highest number of confirmed cases in Africa because of its robust testing, with more than 11,400 cases. Health authorities have reported 51 deaths.