Travelers to France will now need a special COVID pass to visit the Eiffel Tower and visit museums, cinemas and some other cultural sites and tourist attractions as authorities aim to avoid an increase in delta-variant infections, reported the Associated Press.
An iconic Paris landmark, the Eiffel Tower reopened to the public with coronavirus restrictions in place last week. Starting Wednesday, tourists will need to obtain a COVID pass in order to enter. To do this, visitors must prove that they are either fully vaccinated against the virus, have recently tested negative, or have recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection.
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In addition to a COVID pass, visitors will have to follow other rules, including a mandatory mask policy regardless of vaccination status and will have to be patient with capacity limits. The number of daily visitors will be limited to 13,000 per day instead of the usual 25,000.
“Tourism is coming back to Paris and we can once again share the happiness, with visitors from all over the world, of this monument and of Paris,” said Jean-François Martins, head of the tower operating company, at the AFP news agency. “Obviously this is an additional operational complication, but it is manageable.”
The tower was closed in October as France battled an outbreak of COVID-19 infections, remaining closed for nine months and marking the longest closure of the 132-year-old monument since World War II.
France reopened to vaccinated international travelers, including Americans, last month. As of July 21, France had reported nearly 5.9 million cases of COVID-19, including 112,000 deaths.