It felt barely a week and a half ago that we shared how devasted Italy was struck by the Coronavirus pandemic (it was really more like a month), and now the country is set to open its doors to tourism again.
In a surprising bold move, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has decided to lift restrictions nationwide instead of region by region. Italy has seen more than 31,600 deaths, one of the hardest hit countries in Europe.
The Coronavirus lockdown, which was imposed in March, is set to be lifted in two weeks.
From June 3, 2020, citizens would be able to move freely throughout the country; all visitors will be also allowed to enter Italy with no 14-day quarantine requirement, which was previously instituted.
Keep in mind these lifting of ban seem to be for citizens and visitors that reside within the EU for now.
Retail stores and businesses will reopen even earlier, from May 18 onwards, as Italy starts to pick its crippled economy up.
Italy isn’t the only country in the EU looking to open its doors; Greece will be opening some of its travel links to facilitate routes by air and sea.
Various European air carriers are also looking to resume their flights that carry passengers within the EU region. One such carrier would be Air France, who is looking to reopen their Paris-Athens routes coming Saturday.
This essentially means that travel within the EU region will slowly ease, as the EU countries slowly pick themselves up from the large economic setback. And the situation hopefully improves, it doesn’t come at the expense of the health of its people.
It’s truly an incredibly difficult balancing act for a government – the worsening economy and incremental health risk of its people – a position I’m certainly not envious to be in.
For now, Italy has chosen to lift its travel restrictions, in a bid to take a step back into life before Coronavirus.
