Spain is set to open its borders for tourists who have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from the virus in order to start boosting its tourism sector, the country’s secretary of state for tourism said on Tuesday. 
 

Speaking at the World Travel & Tourism Council summit in Mexico, Fernando Valdés announced the programme which will be “fundamental to offering travellers certainty”. Here, tourists will have to show that they do not have the coronavirus. The digital certificate scheme is expected to launch in May, being one of the first countries to test this programme. He said that Spain is “ready to receive visitors in June”. 
 

However, he admitted that the programme still contains risks as they cannot be entirely sure that a person who had contracted the virus managed to travel. The certificates are “not a magic wand,” he said. 
 

Tourism makes up 12% of Spain’s GDP. The country is currently facing its fourth wave of the outbreak, with 3,496,134 people being infected since the start. 77,855 lives were lost to the virus. 
 

The vaccination process is proceeding at a comfortable pace, with 14,994,667 doses of the vaccine having been administered, and 4,020,945 people already receiving both doses. Spain’s population is around 47 million people. 
 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also spoken about the possibility of resuming international travel on May 17th. The EC and the UK are in talks about travel, after European countries applied pressure.