Since the beginning of the week, the capital of the EU – Belgium, where the administrative center of the EU Brussels is located, has been waiving its strict anti-covid rules. The country is lifting several covid entry restrictions for tourists at once. However, the rules still remain strict. In addition, Belgium was the first to introduce safety measures for a new disease – i.e. monkeypox found in the neighboring Netherlands.
Thus, the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) for Health, Food Chain Safety and the Environment announced that from Monday the yellow code, which has been in effect in Belgium since March 2022, will be terminated by decision of the Advisory Committee. This step means that tourists from countries outside the European Union can now enter Belgian territory for secondary purposes such as tourism. At the same time, the authorities also canceled the obligation to take tests on the first and seventh day of arrival, as well as the obligation to be in quarantine for a period of ten days. There will also be no need to fill out a passenger search form before traveling to Belgium or present a valid certificate of vaccination, recovery or test results.
However, the measures will remain in place for tourists “arriving from a country with a new variant of the virus or of concern,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in a press release announcing the changes related to the coronavirus. The mask regime also lost ground not everywhere – masks were canceled in public transport and other places, but kept in medical facilities and “busy and crowded places.”
So far, Belgium has had one of the most stringent restrictions on entry from -for coronavirus compared to other EU and Schengen countries. Incidentally, Belgium was the first European country to introduce countermeasures against the new “glorified” disease: the Belgian Risk Assessment Group (RAG) introduced a three-week quarantine for individuals with symptoms of monkeypox. There is a risk – recently three new cases were recorded in the neighboring Netherlands. The source is clarified – and this is sex tourism: all three participated in a gay fetish festival called Darklands.
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