All remaining anti-coronavirus rules, including an obligatory Covid pass, were officially cancelled in Denmark on Friday, making it the first state in the EU to wholly get back to pre-pandemic daily life.
Starting from midnight on September 10, the deadly virus is no longer classified as a “socially critical disease” by the Danish government, meaning no special measures will be applied to deal with Covid-19 in the European country. All restrictions previously enforced by authorities, including ‘coronapass’ requirements to enter night clubs and other venues, a ban on mass gatherings and obligatory mask-wearing, have been lifted, 548 days after Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen initially declared a lockdown in his country, local media reports. In March 2020, Denmark was among the first nations to enforce harsh measures to fight coronavirus.
Having first announced the decision to abandon the legal basis for restrictions last month, Danish authorities said “the epidemic is under control.” They reserved the right to reinforce special measures “if the pandemic again threatens important functions in society.”
“Throughout the pandemic, Denmark has had higher acceptance than many comparable countries,” Professor Michael Bang Petersen, who advised the Danish government on the subject, wrote on Twitter, adding that “no mandates [were] needed.” An “incredibly high and completely stable” trust in the authorities’ management of the pandemic is behind the vast vaccine acceptance in the country, Petersen wrote. He also suggested that lifting of the restrictions became possible thanks to collective action, after the government “formulated distancing as a moral project, which gained high public support.”