Generalitat to implement Covid passports from midnight on Thursday

Generalitat to implement Covid passports from midnight on Thursday

From midnight this Thursday, December 2, going into Friday 3, the government of Catalonia will implement the obligation to present the Covid passport in restaurants, gyms, and residences.

Josep Maria Argimon, the Minister of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia, confirmed this action today, Monday, November 29, during a press conference. In the same appearance, he also revealed that two people from South Africa and Germany have tested positive for coronavirus in an antigen test at the El airport Prat in Barcelona.

At this stage, they are not cases of the new Omnicron variant of coronavirus, and the samples and screening are reportedly being analysed at the Bellvitge Hospital in Barcelona to determine if it is the new omicron variant of Covid or not. This comes after Span detected its first case of Omnicron today in Madrid.

Last Friday 26, the Government had to suspend the obligation to show the Covid pass, due to the high volume of requests for its download crashing the health website of the Generalitat La Meva Salut.

This occurrence was covered by Argimon in his press conference, where he was accompanied by Jordi Puignero, the vice president and minister of Digital Policies. They both proceeded to attribute the crash to high demand, misuse, or lack of foresight on the part of users.

According to Puignero, in recent days there has been a rush of some 400,000 downloads a day from the website, during the last week alone, about 1.5 million certificates have already been generated. “We have a tool that works, which allows a concurrence of 6,000 tickets per minute, and days to acquire a certificate”,  he assured, as reported by cronicaglobal.elespanol.com.