British vacationers have begun arriving in large numbers in southern Portugal for the first time in more than a year, while the first European visitors have similarly started arriving in Italy after the government lifted a coronavirus quarantine requirement for travellers from the European Union, Britain, and Israel.
On Monday, a plane from Manchester, England, disembarked the first of more than 5,000 tourists that were expected to arrive on 17 UK flights in Portugal’s southern Algarve region on the first day nonessential travel was allowed after governments in the two countries eased their COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions.
As local temperatures climbed toward a forecast high of 32 C, the tourists were met at Faro airport by workers handing out COVID-19 welcome kits containing masks and disinfectant, and by the head of the Algarve tourist authority.
The arrivals brightened the outlook for Portugal’s crucial tourism sector, especially the sun and surf resorts along the Algarve coast which relies heavily on the UK market and where hotels shut down for most of the past year.
Arriving tourists needed to show a negative PCR test for COVID-19 taken within the previous 72 hours.
Both Portugal and the United Kingdom have reduced their seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people to between three and four. Authorities said that rate was low enough to relax restrictions.
The Portuguese government on Saturday announced that people from European countries with COVID-19 incidence rates below 500 cases per 100,000 people over 14 days can now also make nonessential trips to Portugal. That means most Europeans can travel to Portugal, as long as they can show a negative test.
The UK government has put Portugal and 11 other countries on a so-called green list of low-risk territories. British people returning home from those areas don’t need to go into quarantine.
Italy
Meanwhile, in Italy, people began arriving on a flight Monday from Greece in which passengers were required to test negative before boarding.
Among the passengers was Greek tourist Aris Mandatakis, who said the no-quarantine rule was great. He said it was just like being “a normal person.”
Italy announced last week it was relaxing its COVID-19 quarantine requirement for visitors from the EU, Israel, and Britain in a bid to jumpstart its pandemic-devastated tourist industry. Italy had imposed the five-day quarantine on EU travellers to deter visitors over the Easter holiday and to discourage Italians from taking advantage of a loophole that had made it easier to travel abroad than from Rome to Milan.
Italy, where the coronavirus outbreak first erupted in Europe, has seen its confirmed caseload fall to fewer than 10,000 a day after a winter of lockdowns and an accelerating vaccination campaign. The country, however, is still seeing around 200 deaths a day, and has the second-highest confirmed COVID-19 toll in Europe after Britain.