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ARCHIVED - EU rules out lifting international travel bans at Easter due to delays in Covid vaccination
The emergence of new strains of coronavirus adds to the reluctance to permit travel
"For the time being, non-essential travel needs to be restricted."
While regional governments in Spain wrestle with the dilemma of whether to allow inter-regional travel over the Semana Santa holiday, as they did for Christmas and the New Year, at a European level the EU appears to be in little or no doubt on the matter and is on the point of making it clear that international travel will not be permitted at Easter.
The EU view is quite clear: the slow start to the mass immunization campaign, caused mainly by problems in the production and supply chains, along with the emergence of new, more virulent variants of Covid-19, makes it impossible to begin lifting travel restrictions at present. Efforts must focus first on accelerating the rate of vaccination, and in the meantime non-essential travel will continue to be restricted.
The EU says in its press statement: "We are determined to continue to work together and coordinate our action to tackle the pandemic and its consequences. The epidemiological situation remains serious, and the new variants pose additional challenges. We must therefore uphold tight restrictions while stepping up efforts to accelerate the provision of vaccines.
For the time being, non-essential travel needs to be restricted."
While in other parts of the world the number of people vaccinated has shot up since the start of the year, reaching 52 per cent of the population in Israel, 28 per cent in the UK and 14 per cent in the USA, across the EU the equivalent proportion is just 4 per cent having received at least one dose.
This rate is mirrored in Spain, where the latest Ministry of Health update reports that a total of 3,436,158 doses have been administered, with 1.23 million people having received both recommended doses and just under 1 million more having received just the first.
The number of people to have received at least one dose is therefore 2.2 million, equating to 4.65 per cent of the country’s population.
At the same time, in Europe only 1 per cent of cases are subjected to the genome sequencing which makes it possible to detect the British, South African and Brazilian variants, whereas the European Commission itself recommends a rate of 5 per cent and has set aside 75 million euros to step up testing rates.
In this context it is understandable that the temptation to allow travel among different states is an easy one to resist, and the reluctance is reflected in the fact that even after months of negotiations no agreement has been reached which would make it possible to travel anywhere in the EU on returning a negative PCR result, unless a quarantine period is observed. In this context, it seems even more important that agreement is reached quickly on the details of the “health passport” scheme which is currently being debated.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reiterated on Friday after participating in the 2-day European Conference that "It is necessary to maintain restrictions on non-essential travel, but our aim is also to restore normalcy and tourism without increasing the health risk. We must continue working on a vaccination certificate that ensures data protection and non-discrimination."
But at the heart of the matter lies the immunization campaign: until the vast majority of the population have been vaccinated, freedom of movement from one country to another is simply not conceivable. For this reason the pressure is on for the EU to ensure that more vaccines become available and to invest in strengthening the production plants which are within EU territory, thus guaranteeing supplies.
Following the conference, the EU press statement said: " Vaccination has now begun in all our Member States and our vaccine strategy has ensured that all Member States have access to vaccines. Even so, we need to urgently accelerate the authorisation, production and distribution of vaccines, as well as vaccination. We also need to enhance our surveillance and detection capacity in order to identify variants as early as possible so as to control their spread, as set out in the Commission Communication on the ‘HERA Incubator: Anticipating together the threat of COVID-19 variants’. We support the additional efforts by the Commission to work with industry and Member States to increase the capacity of current vaccine production as well as to adjust vaccines to the new variants as necessary. We also support the Commission’s ongoing efforts to accelerate the availability of raw materials, facilitate agreements between manufacturers across supply chains, scope existing facilities so as to help production scale-up in the EU and further the research and development efforts. Companies must ensure predictability of their vaccine production and respect contractual delivery deadlines. Transparency with regard to the overall efforts should be enhanced.
We call for work to continue on a common approach to vaccination certificates."
Conclusion: So there is agreement that the speed of vaccinations must be increased before the EU considers it advisable to re-open external state borders for international leisure travel. The conference discussed the vaccine passport topic and has agreed to pursue this option, but has made it clear that this process may take three months and this rules out removing restrictions at Easter; however, it does give hope that some form of scheme will be in operation by the summer holiday season; whether this will be in place by May 17th, when the English travel roadmap anticipates holidays abroad could theoretically begin, remains to be seen.
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