Premium
The National Association of Romania's Travel Agencies (ANAT) is calling for an alternative epidemiological analysis of holiday destinations for Romanians, according to an ANAT press statement released on Thursday.
The solution suggested by ANAT would be a set, predefined index, so that the persons who return from vacation from a destination with an index below the set value will no longer have to go into quarantine. ANAT officials claim the model is successfully applied in other European countries.
"First of all, let us congratulate you on the way in which the mass vaccination is being carried out, which we consider to be going very well and give us hope that we will return to normal soon! However, we cannot but notice that this obviously gratifying thing for Romania also has negative consequences on the movement of people to countries with a higher epidemiological index than Romania and, implicitly, on tourism, which has been hard tried for more than a year. Romania's index today is 128, smaller than most countries where Romanian tourists usually prefer to travel, but people who have not yet got vaccinated must be quarantined on their return to Romania," underlines ANAT in an open letter sent on Thursday to Prime Minister Florin Citu and Minister of the Economy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Claudiu Nasui.
Thus, ANAT is calling on the Romanian government for support with identifying an alternative epidemiological analysis of holiday destinations for Romanians, such as a preset, predefined index, under which people returning from vacationing in such destinations should no longer be forced into quarantine. For example, if the index is set at 500, all Romanian citizens who return from countries with an epidemiological index below 500 and are not vaccinated should be exempted from quarantine. That model is successfully applied in countries such as Portugal (index set at 500) and Iceland (index set at 700).
"In addition, protocols may be established to allow persons returning from countries with an index higher than the one set nationwide to take a PCR test or a rapid antigen test at the airport upon entry into Romania, and exempting from the quarantine mandate the people testing negative, thus avoiding many unpleasant situations for travelers who have already purchased packages of travel services or individual travel services," according to ANAT Chairman Dumitru Luca, reports Agerpres.
