About to go into a long weekend of the odd sort that comes from religious holidays on a lunar calendar. It’s three days, but beginning on Saturday evening and running through Tuesday. Ramadan ends at sunset tomorrow and is followed by a feast day, Ramadan Bayram, also called Eid al-Fıtr. Bayram simply means feast, so literally the Ramadan feast. And Eid means celebration, so the celebration of breaking the fast. Usually celebrated with feasting, sweets, and much visiting amongst family and friends. The visiting bit will be somewhat curtailed this year but presumably the feasting will start take place and the restaurants are now open, though with more spacing than previously.
The three day holiday is national as well as religious, so presumably most things will be closed. Our guess is that our little shop won’t shut three days in a row, but we would be ok if it did.
Talks between North and South on reopening the border. South saying that they intend to ask those crossing for a certificate saying they have tested covid-19 negative. Not problematic in one sense, in that there are no known active cases in the North. Nuisance and expense factor. Also, what sort of tests - molecular? serological? - and certified by whom. Rumour has it that they will start by allowing students and workers with schools and employment in the South cross first. If they are asking for a certificate provided in the last 72 hours, do they expect these people to be retested every three days? Process may need some tweaking.
In this case the South is not looking at measures that would affect only the North. The short version is that as the airports open they expect, with some exceptions, to accept only passengers from relatively lightly affected countries and to ask for negative certificates. Unsurprisingly, the UK is not on their list. The difficulty with this from our point of view is that few flights coming in from the UK means few going from Cyprus to the UK.
And the UK, not to be left out, has decided, nearly three months after the rest of the world, to quarantine those flying into the country. Probably not applicable to connecting flights. Not too late to be any use at all, but....And just as they are, probably prematurely, relaxing other regulations and sending children back to school. Online comment:
“Look, it’s very simple, the people coming into the country who definitely weren’t a significant risk before are now a very significant risk, whilst the millions of school children who definitely were a significant risk before are now not a significant risk at all, and this is all part of a very clever strategy and definitely isn’t a load of hastily cobbled together bollocks at all”.
The three day holiday is national as well as religious, so presumably most things will be closed. Our guess is that our little shop won’t shut three days in a row, but we would be ok if it did.
Talks between North and South on reopening the border. South saying that they intend to ask those crossing for a certificate saying they have tested covid-19 negative. Not problematic in one sense, in that there are no known active cases in the North. Nuisance and expense factor. Also, what sort of tests - molecular? serological? - and certified by whom. Rumour has it that they will start by allowing students and workers with schools and employment in the South cross first. If they are asking for a certificate provided in the last 72 hours, do they expect these people to be retested every three days? Process may need some tweaking.
In this case the South is not looking at measures that would affect only the North. The short version is that as the airports open they expect, with some exceptions, to accept only passengers from relatively lightly affected countries and to ask for negative certificates. Unsurprisingly, the UK is not on their list. The difficulty with this from our point of view is that few flights coming in from the UK means few going from Cyprus to the UK.
And the UK, not to be left out, has decided, nearly three months after the rest of the world, to quarantine those flying into the country. Probably not applicable to connecting flights. Not too late to be any use at all, but....And just as they are, probably prematurely, relaxing other regulations and sending children back to school. Online comment:
“Look, it’s very simple, the people coming into the country who definitely weren’t a significant risk before are now a very significant risk, whilst the millions of school children who definitely were a significant risk before are now not a significant risk at all, and this is all part of a very clever strategy and definitely isn’t a load of hastily cobbled together bollocks at all”.
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