As the European summer vacation season hits its stride with a new EU-wide travel pass now in place, the bloc’s medical office and a top airline chief have issued reassuring messages on travelling, despite the threat of the surging delta coronavirus variant.

With the EU COVID-19 digital certificate officially coming into effect last Thursday (even though many member states had started introducing it over the past month), many airports saw busy scenes as masses of people sought to escape to the sunny southern European Union nations for a beach holiday.

“With this, everyone in Europe should be able to travel safely and freely this summer,” said EU Commission spokesman Christian Wigand. And in a bloc of 450 million citizens, he said that “already until now, more than two hundred million certificates have been generated.”

Extreme vigilance against the virus is still being urged, with the European Centre for Disease Control warning that the risk of infection from the delta variant is “high to very high” for partially or unvaccinated communities across the 30 countries on the continent, estimating that by the end of August, the variant will account for 90% of cases in the European Union.

However, Dr. Marco Cavaleri, the European Medicines Agency’s head of vaccines strategy, was reassuring Thursday, stating that the four approved vaccines in the EU are all “protective against all strains that are circulating in Europe, including the delta variant” that emerged in India and is more contagious than others.

“Emerging data from real world evidence are showing that two doses of vaccines are protective against the delta variant,” he said.

For airline industry leaders with a huge financial stake in travel’s recovery, such as Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, those are sweet words.

“A huge amount of both the UK population and, increasingly, the European adult population are fully vaccinated, therefore they are not at risk,” he said, announcing the opening of more routes south from Brussels airports.

On Wednesday, highly vaccinated Canada joined, along with 10 other countries, a list of countries whose citizens are approved for travel to Europe without restrictions.

The new developments in Europe, however, don’t mean all tourism transport has gone back to its smooth former self. Take, for example, travel between Germany and Portugal. The former classifies countries in three risk categories, and Portugal on Tuesday became the only EU member listed as a “virus variant area,” Berlin’s highest-risk bracket.

Airlines and others are restricted largely in transporting German citizens and residents from countries on that list, and those who arrive must spend 14 days in quarantine at home – a period that can’t be cut short with a negative test.

The UK has been on the list since May 23 because of concerns over the spread of the delta variant. Russia was added along with Portugal on Tuesday; other “virus variant areas” include India, Brazil, and South Africa. Portugal was listed for an initial two-week period, which may be extended.