Covid-19: Belgium bans non-essential travel

Travelers at Zaventem International Airport in Brussels on January 22, 2021. AP - Francisco Seco

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Belgium decided on Friday that non-essential travel will be banned for the entire month of February, from January 26.

A decision that applies to all trips abroad, including the European Union.

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With our correspondent in Brussels,

Pierre Benazet

Discouraging non-essential travel, this is the leitmotif that Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo hammered home on Thursday evening

during the videoconference of the European summit

.

The announcement of a ban on non-essential travel until the end of February was therefore expected.

The ambition is obviously to prevent new super-contaminating events, as had been the returns from vacation of Belgians who went skiing in the Alps last year.

The measure will be valid from February 1 to 28 and is therefore broader than the only winter holidays, or carnival holidays as the Belgians call them and which take place in the third week of February.

Vacation returns are therefore in the crosshairs since Belgium is moving from the “travel strictly not recommended” instruction to “non-essential travel prohibited”.

And for Belgium, almost the entire European Union is classified as red.

Six categories of exemptions are provided: for cross-border commuters, students, business trips, assistance to a person in need, requirements for family events and visits for separated parents whose children reside in another country.

Belgium, which already imposes two PCR tests on return from abroad, is also extending the mandatory quarantine from seven to ten days.

After a second wave which did not see the contaminations fly off as it did last spring, Belgium fears

the new variants of the coronavirus.

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  • Belgium

  • Coronavirus

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  • European Union