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Passports please! COVID passports will come into use from Saturday in the Balearics after the High Court gave them the green light. Most hospitality and nightlife businesses will have to ask customers to produce a QR identification code that proves they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, or tested negative in a PCR test. A phone or paper certificate will be needed to enter gyms, restaurants or bars, while a special app will be used by traders. Hospitality businesses with a capacity of under 50 people will be exempt. The COVID certificate has been required at nightclubs and nursing homes for some time, but will now be extended to a slew of other hospitality businesses and gyms. The news comes after COVID cases in the Balearics tripled in just a month.
Cases
The cumulative 14-day incidence now stands at 266.4 cases per 100,000 compared to 92.8 on October 30. As a result, the islands are officially at medium risk of infection and will be at high risk if the rate reaches 300 cases. Menorca has already reached the high risk level, as its cumulative incidence is 428.7. In the next few days, it could reach a 14-day cumulative incidence of more than 500 and become at extreme risk. Mallorca (with an incidence of 264.4) and Ibiza (191.7) remain at medium risk, while Formentera (67.2) is at low risk. Health chiefs have been urging the unvaccinated to get their jabs in a bid to ‘save Christmas’, the Olive Press reported some 90,000 expats on the islands had still not been vaccinated - an alarming half of the total numbers of people still unvaccinated.
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Your expat
voice in Spain
www.theolivepress.es December 3rd - December 16th 2021
Vol. 5 Issue 120
PUTTING ON THE RITZ EXCLUSIVE: The Olive Press grills Valencia’s hottest chef Quique Dacosta at his brand new restaurant in Madrid
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ABOUT TIME!
Brits step in to carry out safety checks at Mallorca hotels in wake of balcony fall deaths A NEW system of safety checks will be carried out by British consular staff at resorts across the Balearic Islands following a spate of deaths of holidaymakers who fell from hotel balconies. The new protocol has been established following the high-profile death of 18-year-old Brit, Tom Channon, who plummeted 50ft over a knee-high wall at the notorious Eden Roc complex in Magaluf in July 2018. The teenager was celebrating the end of his A-levels with a holiday with friends on the island, when he became disoriented after a night out drinking and fell to his death. An inquest revealed no safety measures were installed at the hotel, despite a similar tragedy
By Fiona Govan
occurring just weeks earlier. It emerged that his death came just a month after another British holidaymaker, Thomas Hughes, 20, died in a fall at the same hotel, while a third Briton, Natalie Cormack, had fallen to her death at the same complex two months earlier in April, 2018.
Campaign
Tom’s family successfully campaigned since his death to make the wall safer, something they believe could have been achieved sooner if only communications between the authorities and the island were clearer. Now a new training programme named ‘Tom’s Check’ has been de-
NOTORIOUS: The Eden Roc complex and (below) Tom Channon
signed for British consulate staff aimed at improving the safety of holidaymakers and helping to support bereaved families. One part of the training will focus on ensuring that British consulate staff meet with local authorities and request they address safety concerns and visit the site.
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Tom's Check also teaches staff to request meetings with the police to help understand safety concerns and to identify where the consulate will look to take action. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will test the new measures in the Balearic Islands in the summer of 2022. If successful, it will be introduced TRAGIC: Hughes and Cormack in other resorts across Spain. Tom's parents said that their son would have wanted the measures and feel proud that they bear his name. The Foreign, CommonSee page 5 wealth and Development Office said: “We continue to work with Tom's parents to ensure families have access
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to the information they need, and build on our work in preventing tragic accidents from happening in the future.” Opinion Page 6