E.U. to relax travel rules for vaccinated residents

The E.U. will relax its travel rules for vaccinated residents and those who’ve recovered from the virus.

The European Union recommended on Tuesday that people traveling among its 27 member states who have been vaccinated in the past nine months or recovered from the coronavirus should not face additional restrictions like testing or quarantine — the latest indication that the bloc is accepting Covid-19 as a part of everyday life rather than a severely disruptive force.

The change came a day after the World Health Organization said that the spread of the Omicron variant could change the pandemic from overwhelming to manageable.

“Omicron offers plausible hope for stabilization and normalization,” said Dr. Hans Kluge, the agency’s director for Europe, although he cautioned it was too early to drop the restrictions entirely, as large areas of the global population remain unvaccinated.

Under the new recommendation, E.U. residents with a Covid digital certificate recording their full course of vaccination, a certificate of recent recovery from the disease or a negative test result not older than 72 hours will be able to move freely across the bloc.

The rules, which come into force on Feb. 1, are aimed at coordinating travel restrictions across the bloc. Public health measures remain the remit of national governments, a dynamic that in the past has led to a patchwork of chaotic rules. Individual countries can still impose additional requirements on visitors, such as quarantines or negative test results.

But the bloc recommended additional restrictions for people who are not vaccinated or have not recovered from the virus, and who are coming from areas that the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control indicates as having a high circulation of the virus. Such people will be able to travel if they can show a negative test result, but will have to quarantine and undergo additional testing.  ...