Europe Clamps Down, Tries To Head Off Delta Covid Summer Wave Like UK's, 'Green Vaccine Passes'
Governments are launching de facto vaccine passport schemes as they try to head off a summer Covid wave like the UK’s. The Guardian, July 25, 2021. - Ed.
With the school term finally over, Britons are flying to Europe in their tens of thousands, record levels for this Covid year. They are arriving in countries where the Delta variant paralysing Britain is just becoming dominant – and Europe is responding by clamping down. Some countries have tightened border controls, with Malta barring entry to unvaccinated travellers and Germany bringing in stricter quarantine rules for people arriving from Spain and the Netherlands.
More broadly, authorities from Greece to Italy and France to Portugal are bringing in what are effectively vaccine passports for a wide range of activities, although most are shying away from using that term, which has become incendiary. Italy will require proof of vaccination – through the Europe-wide “green pass” – to do anything from visiting a museum, to working out at a gym or watching a film. Similar rules in France have sparked 2 weekends of headline-grabbing protests attended by tens of thousands, including far-right activists on Saturday. But most French adults are fully vaccinated now and polls show a majority support the new measures.
In Greece, bars and restaurants can now only welcome vaccinated customers inside, a curb that Portugal introduced at the start of July. The WHO said on Friday that the Delta variant has now become dominant in much of Europe. And politicians have cited the rapid rise of this highly transmissible form of Covid to justify moves restricting much of public life to the vaccinated. “The Delta variant is even more of a threat than the other variants,” Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi said. “The green pass is not arbitrary, but a necessary condition not to shut down the economy. Without vaccinations, everything will have to close again.”
The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, warned of the specific risks caused by Delta as the bank voted to keep its vast Covid stimulus programme in place last week. "The reopening of large parts of the economy is supporting a vigorous bounce-back in the services sector. But the Delta variant of the coronavirus could dampen this recovery in services especially, in tourism and hospitality,” she said...
More,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/25/europe-clamps-down-amid-fears-over-rapid-spread-of-delta-variant
- PARIS CONTINUES TO PROTEST AGAINST PASS SANITAIRE | Paris protests on July 24, 2021.
= new reply since forum marked as read
