COVID 'passports' will no longer be needed in the Comunidad Valenciana to access anywhere other than care homes when visiting friends or relatives, starting today (Tuesday, February 22), regional president Ximo Puig has announced.
The original plan was to axe the requirement from Tuesday, March 1, provided contagion rates continued to fall, but the move has been brought forward a week.
Puig has also agreed to eliminate the legal limit of 10 customers to a table in bars and restaurants, and the requirement to keep these at least 1.5 metres (4'11”) apart.
But smoking in outside seating areas in cafés and eateries remains banned at the moment, as authorities consider it could lead to the virus spreading if a person with a cigarette is infected.
“These new times are calling for us not to extend restrictions for one day longer – our economic, social and emotional recovery is about to begin,” Puig stated in an inter-departmental meeting he chaired jointly with the regional public health secretary Isaura Navarro.
At present, the Comunidad Valenciana is the only region still requesting Covid 'passports', or vaccine certificates, as a condition of entry to inside areas of restaurants, bars, gyms, sports and concert arenas, theatres and cinemas, among other leisure premises which typically see large numbers of people in a confined space.
From February 22, they will only be needed by visitors to nursing homes, or by anyone entering Social Centres – a type of community hall-cum-café, sometimes with a theatre or cinema room inside – given that these are frequently used by the elderly.
Use of Covid certificates for these places needs to be approved by the regional High Court of Justice, which has the last word in each of Spain's 17 autonomously-governed regions concerning pandemic-related restrictions, but this organism is not expected to present any barriers to the rule change.
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