Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
ROME—The line to get into Rome’s Pantheon snaked around a maze of cordons on the day after Christmas. No one paid attention to the markings on the ancient marble floor that show the safe 1-meter distance. A group of young American tourists, required masks hanging from their chins, laughed loudly as they marveled at the height of the door. “COVID? What COVID?” asked Jamie, who didn’t want his last name used out of fear he’d have to quarantine when he returns to the U.S., if restrictions change. “We got cheap flights and cheap rooms and said, ‘Fuck it, we’re going to Rome.’”
Across the eternal city, the mood leading up to and after the holidays was the same as gleeful tourists threw coins into the Trevi Fountain, slurped spaghetti at sidewalk cafes, and took selfies in front of the Colosseum.
“We had to cancel our trip last year and we weren’t going to do it again this year,” British tourist Melissa Adams told The Daily Beast as she waited for a gelato near the Spanish Steps. “We are vaccinated and boosted and being very careful. It really doesn’t feel as scary anymore.”
A group of nuns were among the hoards gathered in St. Peter’s Square to hear Pope Francis’ Christmas message to the world. Even though the Vatican canceled all public events, the pope delivered his message from the balcony on the basilica, which naturally drew crowds, albeit much smaller than years past.
“We had to cancel last year,” a French nun told an Italian television station. When asked if she was afraid of COVID, she told the network, “God will protect us, and so will the vaccine.”
Italy, like many other countries in Europe, is being inundated by a brutal wave of the pandemic with record numbers of daily cases nearing 100,000 a day. But hospitalizations and deaths are far fewer than previous waves with fewer cases, which has given health authorities reason to believe it is time to change the strategy of closing things down and start to just live with COVID.
Italy’s health minister, Roberto Speranza, said that vaccines and testing would continue to guide the strategy, but long isolations and quarantines were too difficult on the workforce so people can now “test out” of positive test results much sooner than the two-week standard that has been a staple of the pandemic in many countries.
Italy recently closed nightclubs and instituted an outdoor mask mandate, but Speranza insisted draconian restrictions, like last year when Italy was locked down for Christmas, were not being considered. “Vaccines are our weapon of choice,” he said. “We will shorten booster times and require people to be vaccinated, but if they are they won’t be punished.”
Italy was the first epicenter of the pandemic outside China and the first Western nation to lock down. It was also the first country in Europe to introduce a mandatory vaccine green pass to dine indoors and go to museums which could be obtained by recovering from COVID, being vaccinated or having a negative COVID test. Now that green pass has been reinforced, and negative COVID tests no longer replace vaccines for many venues. In late January some venues will require full vaccination including boosters and a negative COVID test for entrance. Like many European nations, those who choose not to be vaccinated are the ones left out.
Italy currently requires a negative PCR or antigen test to enter the country, and health officials have started conducting random tests at the nation’s airports in part to see if people were getting false negative results or perhaps skirting the system by acquiring false test results. The sampling has so far shown a negligible number of positive cases among those who entered, and most did have valid negative tests, implying that no system is foolproof.
At a pop-up testing site in front of a pharmacy in central Rome on Tuesday, a German family was waiting to get swabbed to return home because their airline required it. Many others were there so they could feel safe about joining friends for New Year’s parties since Italy has cancelled all public events for the holiday and banned gathering in city squares.
“This has been the best vacation of our lives,” Hilda, the matriarch of the family, told The Daily Beast. “Even though the masks are a nuisance, we saw everything we wanted with fewer crowds. I’m so glad we came.”
After nearly two years of pandemic chaos, in which the travel industry easily suffered the most in economic terms, COVID is no longer a deterrent as long as governments keep their countries open.
On the Tuesday before New Year’s, Rome’s Fiumicino airport was buzzing with a steady stream of arrivals and departures. “This really is a turning point in the pandemic,” Ginevra Agnelli, who was traveling with her husband and toddler to Paris, France, where new daily cases hovered around 180,000. “We are so tired of being afraid. We are vaccinated, have been tested and ready to go. The risk is worth it to travel.”