The EU limits the validity of the covid certificate to nine months

Following the approval of the 27 Member States, the European Comission has approved this Tuesday the update of the regulation on the intra-european travel rules With which it intends to limit the spread of covid-19 and avoid chaos and lack of coordination in movements within the European Union. The main novelty is that the european covid certificate, as Brussels proposed three weeks ago, will have a valid for nine months (270 days) from the full schedule of vaccination to force citizens to continue being vaccinated and encourage those who already have the full schedule to receive the booster dose.

“What is needed now is to ensure that booster injection campaigns move forward as quickly as possible, that as many citizens are protected with an additional dose, and that our certificates remain a key tool for travel and protection. of public health “, has defended the Commissioner of Health, Stella Kyriakides. To give European governments time to introduce the necessary technical changes and launch reinforcement campaigns, the new rules will not enter into force until February 1, 2022.

The expiration period of 9 months has been adopted taking into account the recommendations of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which estimates that the booster dose should be administered no later than six months after the initial cycle of vaccination has been completed. To this period, an additional three months are added to give time to the national vaccination authorities to adjust the campaigns and to the citizens to access the new injections.

In practice this means that the Twenty-seven will have to accept vaccination certificates for a period of nine months from the administration of the last dose of the full regimen and will not be able to establish a shorter or longer acceptance period. That is, in the case of single-dose vaccines, like Janssen, it means 270 days from the first and only injection. For two-dose vaccines, this means 270 days from the second injection or, according to the vaccination strategy of the vaccinating Member State, the first and only injection after recovery from the virus.

807 million certificates

The European Commission regards the digital passport as “a success story” that has made it possible to facilitate safe travel within the European Union during the pandemic. So far, 807 million certificates have been issued and it has become an international standard as it is used in more than 60 countries and territories on five continents. The last third countries to join the list, after the EU recognized the equivalence of their certificates, were Montenegro, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay on Tuesday.

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Although the new rules apply only to intra-community travel, the European Commission encourages Member States to use the same rules at the national level to give security to travelers and avoid disturbances. Member States, however, have the power to go further and this is what more than half a dozen countries have done when notifying the introduction of additional restrictions to curb the spread of the omicron variant. This is the case of Portugal, which will require a test until January 9 from all Europeans who want to enter its territory, regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not. The same is done by Ireland, Greece, Italy or Austria. Also Cyprus and Latvia require a test on arrival.

“The EU’s covid digital certificate is a success. We must keep it that way and adapt to changing circumstances and new knowledge. Unilateral measures by Member States would return us to the fragmentation and uncertainty that we saw last spring,” but ” the nine-month acceptance period will give citizens and companies the security they need to plan their trips with confidence “, has valued the commissioner of justice, Didier Reynders.