As it happens every year, the Romanians living abroad
\nare beginning to come home these days to spend their winter holidays with their
\nfamilies. This is the second Christmas and New Year’s that people will
\ncelebrate under pandemic restrictions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The new rules for entering Romania, introduced by the
\nauthorities on December 10 to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus
\nvariant, Omicron, are making checkpoints even more crowded than usual. Many Romanians
\nare not vaccinated and unaware of the new restrictions. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Those who come from outside the EU must present a PCR
\ntest not older than 48 hours. Those who test negative, even if unvaccinated or
\nnot recovered from the disease, will have to isolate for 10 days, while
\ntravellers without a test will have to quarantine for 14 days. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
For those who come from the EU, the requirements
\ninclude the digital certificate confirming vaccination, recovery from the
\ndisease or a negative PCR test not older than 72 hours. The rules apply for
\nboth Romanian and foreign nationals. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Border police warn that, because people are not aware
\nof these regulations, at the N\u0103dlac 2 checkpoint on Romania’s western border, in
\n8 hours as many as 1,400 people were quarantined either for 10 or for 14 days. And
\nwith the quarantine documents requiring time to fill in, the waiting times at
\nthe border are even longer. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In order to avoid crowding, the number of agents and
\nof lanes has been increased in most border points. But even so, people are
\nwaiting for as long as 2 hours to get into Romania. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
And so do lorries and trucks. Customs officers and
\nborder police say their number has been on the rise since mid-November, when fruit
\nand vegetable imports went up, and the processing capacity stayed the same. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
According to border police, these days at the southern
\nborder, with Bulgaria, truck drivers have been waiting for as long as 2 hours, on
\nthe western border, in Bor\u015f 2, waiting times are around one hour, and in the
\nnorth-east, at the Ukrainian border, the longest waiting time is 2 hours, at
\nthe Siret checkpoint. (tr. A.M. Popescu)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The new rules for entering the country are causing long queues at checkpoints<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":72993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29612,34924,36459,32928,35383,31880,29710,35748],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-90605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-border","tag-checkpoint","tag-crowding","tag-holidays","tag-quarantine","tag-queuing","tag-restrictions","tag-testing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n