Italy will reopen for tourists in mid-May, Prime Minister Draghi said

• Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the nation was nearly ready to welcome back tourists.
• The country will reopen for tourism between European Union countries in mid-May.
• Italy experienced a third wave of COVID-19 infections beginning in March.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Tuesday said the country will welcome back tourists from other European Union nations in mid-May.

"Waiting for the European Certificate ... we have a national green pass that will enable people to move from region to region and will be operational by mid-May, so let us not wait until mid-June for the EU pass," Draghi said, according to Reuters.

"In mid-May tourists can have the Italian pass ... so the time has come to book your holidays in Italy," he added.

Draghi made the comments at a meeting of tourism ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) nations in the EU, according to Reuters.

About 11% of the population of Italy is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University. Italy in April became the first European country to require that healthcare workers receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The country faced a third wave of COVID-19 in March.

According to the Hopkins data, Italy over the past week saw 1,894 deaths from COVID-19, down from an all-time high of 5,303 deaths in March 2020. About 80,000 new COVID-19 cases were diagnosed in Italy over the past seven days, down from the all-time high of more than 243,000 cases diagnosed in November last year.