Portugal is one of the countries excluded by Norway as regards lifting restrictions on entry into the country of passengers from European countries, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg announced this Thursday.
In the announcement, made at a press conference, Solberg added that the criteria considered – epidemiological situation and local restrictions – exclude, in addition to Portugal, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta and Romania, in addition to almost all of Sweden, which remain officially destinations with travel restrictions. The restrictions will be lifted from July 15.
In order to be accepted in the batch with travel authorization to Norway, from July 15, countries must meet several health criteria, namely a contamination rate of less than 20 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
“As of July 15, we want to remove quarantine for travel throughout the Schengen area and the European Economic Area (which includes the European Union and three other European countries: Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein),” said Erna Solberg.
“But, and this is very important, removing quarantine assumes that the objective criteria are met, in each country,” added Solberg at the press conference.
The easing of the measures “shows that Denmark and most of Europe are in much better shape than we had recently expected,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Jeppe Kodof said in a statement today. Currently, entry into Norwegian territory is prohibited for most non-resident people.
For citizens who return, after traveling abroad, a mandatory 10-day quarantine applies.
The only exceptions that Norway has been accepting since 15 June include travel to three neighboring countries, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, but excluding Sweden, where the epidemic keeps the country well above the level of 20 cases of contamination per 100,000 inhabitants.
Travel to and from the island of Gotland, the only Swedish territory for which restrictions have also been lifted, is subject to quarantine.
The Norwegian Government has acknowledged that it is concerned about the need to open borders, for the recovery of the economy, in a country that has around 5 billion euros of revenue in the tourism sector. Norway has 8,739 cases of contamination with the new coronavirus, including 249 deaths.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed almost 482,000 deaths and infected more than 9.45 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 1,549 people out of 40,415 confirmed as infected died, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
After Europe succeeded China as the center of the pandemic in February, the American continent is now the one with the most confirmed cases and the most deaths.
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