The Overseas Situation Report Tuesday 22 February 2022
by Mike Evans
“Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance”
Abigail Adams
Across the world in the past week there has been a 21% decline in Covid 19 cases reported and an 11% drop in deaths. This has prompted many countries to look at reducing their restrictions they had in place. In this report we are looking at what changes have happened or are about to happen across Europe and the World.
After evaluating that the COVID-19 restrictions have not halted the further spread of the virus and its variants, as well as after taking into account the increased vaccination rates, several European Union/Schengen Area countries have announced that they will now apply less stringent rules.
Some of the countries that have removed testing requirements and that will apply relaxed rules are Sweden, Norway, Greece, and Czechia, among others,
Sweden is among the first countries to announce that it would no longer apply entry rules to incoming travellers. The Swedish authorities announced that starting from February 9, travellers from the EU/Schengen Area will be able to enter the country restriction-free, regardless of their vaccination or recovery status. Such a decision, which was announced by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, means that travellers from the EU/Schengen Area are no longer required to present an EU Digital COVID Certificate or other proof of vaccination, recovery, or negative test results when reaching Sweden.
Apart from easing the entry rules for travellers, Sweden has announced that from February 9, the majority of national COVID-19 restrictions will be lifted too. On the other hand, rules that are currently imposed against third countries will continue to remain in place.
Also in Scandinavia, Norway has also eased its entry rules. The Norwegian authorities announced earlier in January that the quarantine requirement would be removed as this measure “is no longer considered necessary for infection control.”
Travellers can now enter Norway without being subject to self-isolation rules even if they have not been vaccinated or recovered from the virus.
Nonetheless, it has been emphasised that unvaccinated and unrecovered travellers still need to get tested and complete the entry form before their arrival in Norway.
Meanwhile in Greece, the government of Greece has only abolished its COVID-19 testing requirement for travellers who hold a valid EU COVID Certificate.
The decision was announced by the Greek government and means that all those who hold one of the certificates recognised in Greece are no longer required to undergo pre-entry testing. On the other hand, travellers who do not meet the entry criteria will continue to be subject to the testing requirement, even if they have been vaccinated or recovered from the virus.
Czechia has also eased rules for travellers as well as for the citizens of the country. The Prime Minister of Czechia, Petr Fiala, stated that starting from February 9 the requirement to present one of the passes would be dropped. This means that all persons are now able to enter restaurants, bars, cultural events, and other facilities without having to present a valid or vaccination certificate. As for the remaining restrictions, Czechia plans on removing them during the second half of this month.
While other countries were still evaluating the COVID-19 situation, Denmark lifted all its COVID-19 restrictions earlier this month, thus becoming the first country to do so. In line with the new rules that Denmark has, travellers are no longer required to wear a mask or present one of the certificates that fall under the COVID-19 Certificates in order to enter restaurants, bars, and other indoor venues. Additionally, the quarantine requirement for persons who have tested positive for the virus has also been abolished.
Across the Atlantic in Canada, another weekend of protests Canada’s Covid-19 mandates saw around 200 arrests in the nation’s capital as authorities moved to end the week- long demonstration, towing vehicles and going after protesters’ pocketbooks with financial penalties. Police said they employed pepper spray and escalated tactics over the weekend to disperse crowds and make arrests with protesters gathered in front of the Parliament building. Some of those arrests included protesters who allegedly had smoke grenades and fireworks, and were wearing body armour, police said.
The Ottawa protest started in late January by a group of truck drivers opposed to a Covid-19 vaccine and testing mandate. But others outside the trucking industry have joined to express their frustration with an array of other Covid-19 health measures, such as requirements to wear masks in schools.
Meanwhile As COVID-19 cases decline, the Government of Canada is easing some of its more restrictive travel requirements. Changes to the federal government’s COVID-19 testing requirements for all fully vaccinated travellers take effect on February 28, 2022
Fully vaccinated travellers arriving to Canada will now have the option of using a quicker and cheaper COVID-19 rapid antigen test to meet pre-arrival testing requirements. Fully vaccinated travellers may still use a molecular test result (“PCR”) but it is no longer mandatory. Fully vaccinated travellers may still be randomly selected for post-arrival testing but will not have to quarantine while awaiting their test result. More restrictive rules still apply to all unvaccinated travellers.
In addition to these pre-arrival and post-arrival testing changes, international flights will be allowed to land at all Canadian airports as of February 28, 2022. This will return further normalcy to air travel. Travellers who are not fully vaccinated will still be subject to more restrictive travel rules. Unvaccinated travellers are still unable to board a flight departing from a Canadian airport and will also have issues with boarding return flights to Canada. Unvaccinated travellers are also required to take a PCR pre-arrival test. Foreign nationals who are unvaccinated are not eligible to board a flight to Canada. Any unvaccinated traveller who manages to arrive at a Canadian port of entry will be required to quarantine for 14 days and take post-arrival testing.
Across the other side of the world, Australia saw its first international tourists arrive this week since they closed their borders to all international travellers in March 2020.
International tourists and business travellers began arriving in Australia with few restrictions on Monday, bringing together families in tearful reunions after separations of two years or longer forced by some of the strictest pandemic measures of any democracy in the world.
Australia closed its borders to tourists in March 2020 in a bid to reduce the local spread of COVID-19, but on Monday removed its final travel restrictions for fully vaccinated passengers.
Travellers were greeted at Sydney’s airport by jubilant well-wishers waving toy koalas and favourite Australian foods including Tim Tams chocolate cookies and jars of Vegemite spread.
Federal Tourism Minister Dan Tehan was on hand to welcome the first arrivals on a Qantas flight from Los Angeles which landed at 6:20 a.m. local time. “I think there’ll be a very strong rebound in our tourism market. Our wonderful experiences haven’t gone away,” Tehan said.
Danielle Vogl, who lives in Canberra, and her Florida-based partner Eric Lochner have been separated since October 2019 by the travel restrictions. She said she burst into tears when she heard about the lifting of the restrictions, which will allow them to reunite in April, and telephoned him with the news.
“I actually woke him up to tell him, because I thought it was big enough news to do that,” Vogl told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“He couldn’t believe it. He was like ‘Are you sure, is this true?’ and I’m like ‘Yes, it’s happening. This is over now: we can be together again,”‘ she added.
Lochner was not eligible for an exemption from the travel ban because the couple weren’t married or living together. “It’s been a very long and very cruel process for us,” Vogl said.
Qantas on Monday was bringing in passengers from eight overseas destinations including Vancouver, Singapore, London, and New Delhi. The Sydney-based airline’s chief executive Alan Joyce said bookings have been strong since the federal government announced two weeks ago that the country was relaxing restrictions.
“It has been a tough two years for everybody in the tourism industry, but today is really one of the big steps on the way back to a full recovery so we are very excited,” Joyce said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 1.2 million people had visas to enter Australia with 56 international flights due to touch down in the first 24 hours of the border reopening.
Whilst the border is now open there are still very stringent rules surrounding the pandemic and the individual states have their own rules so it is imperative people check before they arrive as to what they will need to do.
Finally, to show balance and that the pandemic is still not over everywhere we turn to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is now dealing with a bigger Covid crisis than the outbreak in Wuhan that heralded the start of the pandemic, throwing into doubt whether China’s Covid Zero playbook of mass testing, isolation and quarantine can stamp it out.
Daily cases in the city have surged to more than 6,000 from a little over 100 in less than a month, topping anything seen in China’s initial wave centred around Wuhan save for Feb. 12, 2020, when a backlog of reporting saw daily cases spike above 15,000. That, and subsequent outbreaks in China, were brought under control by lockdowns that Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said are off the table. Instead, authorities are planning to test each of the city’s 7.5 million residents while turning hotels into isolation centres. However, the testing blitz won’t start until next month, raising concerns the virus will run rampant in the meantime, further straining an already overwhelmed health system.
“Lining up and gathering for testing presents a huge infection risk,” said Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “If the case load reaches tens of thousands as predicted, mass testing will only make things go from bad to worse. What you need to do is to avoid contact as much as possible.”
The thousands of daily infections means the opportunity to deploy mainland China’s strategy of mass testing to disrupt transmission has already been lost, Jin said.“In China they are only able to do this because infections are so low so they can shoot mosquitoes with cannon balls.” he said, referring to the outsized responsemainland authorities mount at the detection of just a handful of cases.
While more is now known about the virus and how to treat it than when it first appeared in Wuhan, Hong Kong is also dealing with the more-infectious omicron variant. And while more than 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, about 40% of Hong Kong residents aged 80 or above have received a first dose, leaving them particularly vulnerable.
Until the next time Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 425,571,831
Total Deaths Worldwide – 5,908,887
Total Recovered Worldwide – 351,377,953
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 68,284,991 (16% of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 357,286,840
Information and Resources:
https://www.worldometer.info/coronavirus/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#countries
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-18