Citizens from third countries will be eligible to enter Italy even for unnecessary purposes, such as tourism, after the latter’s government has decided to abolish the ban imposed on non-essential travel for arrivals from these territories.
In addition, Italy’s government has decided to abolish the pre-entry testing requirement for arrivals from other countries, thus facilitating the travel process for arrivals from third countries.
Authorities in Italy have stressed that the new changes will take effect starting from tomorrow, March 1, VisaGuide.World reports.
Such new changes have been confirmed by Italian Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, who stressed that from March 1, all arrivals from third countries would be subject to the same entry requirements as travelers from the European Union countries.
“From March 1 for arrivals from all non-European countries, the same rules will be in force as already provided for European countries. One of the conditions of the green pass will be sufficient for entry into Italy: vaccination certificate, recovery certificate, or negative test,” Speranza wrote on his official Twitter account on February 22.
Italy’s Ministry of Health decision follows the recommendation of the Council of the European Union, who advised the Member States to lift the non-essential travel ban for citizens of third countries, which was previously imposed as a preventive measure in order to stop the spread of the Coronavirus and its new strains.
The Council recommended the Member States to lift the ban imposed on non-essential travel for all third-country citizens who have completed their immunization process against the virus with any of the vaccines approved for use by the European Medicines Agency or the World Health Organisation, provided that the last dose of the vaccine has been received within the last 270 days.
According to the figures provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO), since the start of the pandemic, authorities in Italy have reported a total of 12,651,251 cases of Coronavirus infection and a total of 154,013 deaths.
The figures provided by WHO also show that in the last seven days, a total of 327,852 people have tested positive for the virus in Italy, while 1,731 people have lost their lives due to the virus during the same period.
In addition, based on the figures provided by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), all European countries, except Malta, have reported high rates of COVID-19 infection in recent days.
Italy, together with France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland, have registered the highest infection rates, taking into account the data provided by WHO; however, even amid the current epidemiological situation, countries have started to facilitate the rules imposed due to COVID-19.
Such a decision by many countries’ governments comes as an effort to ease the travel process and help industries recover from the damages caused by the virus, especially the travel and tourism industry.