STA, 4 March 2020 - Slovenia will step up health checks on its borders starting on Monday. It plans to reintroduce checkpoints on internal EU borders, which were scrapped in mid-February, and tighten quarantine rules for arrivals, Interior Minister Aleš Hojs told the press on Thursday.
"The government is particularly concerned about [coronavirus] variants from South Africa and from countries in which some variants have not been explored and we have no way of knowing how they will react to vaccines," he said.
There will be three kinds of border checks on Slovenia's borders with Austria, Hungary and Italy, designated as A, B and C.
Checkpoints A will be open around-the clock. They will be on major crossings Karavanke, Ljubelj, Šentilj, Gornja Radgona and Gederovci on the border with Austria, Dolga Vas and Pince on the border with Hungary, and Vrtojba, Fernetiči and Škofije on the border with Italy.
B-rated checkpoints will be open on designated hours; an updated list thereof will be available on government web pages. C-rated checkpoints are intended for owners of land on both sides of the border. They will be open around the clock and checks will be performed randomly.
The second major change concerns quarantine for arrivals into Slovenia.
All those who do not produce proof of vaccination, proof they have already had Covid-19, or a negative test will be required to quarantine and may end the quarantine after five days with a negative test; presently, they are allowed to test the next day to end their quarantine.
All those who may now cross the border on a daily basis, in particular cross-border commuters and students, will have to get tested every seven days. The requirement will be waived for children under 13. Additional testing sites will be put up, in particular on the border with Italy, Hojs said.
Some changes were also made to the list of red countries that are considered risky. Certain regions of Italy (the Aosta Valley, Sardinia and Sicily), Austria (Vorarlberg), Spain (Extremadura, Balearic Islands and Canary Islands) and France (Guyana and Martinique) are no longer red, while Finland's only red regions are Helsinki-Uusimaa and Aland, and so are Greece's Attica and West Greece, and Norway's Oslo.
Cuba was added to the list of risky third countries.
