Mr. Ivan Bassato:

My thanks to Mr. Larkin and the joint committee for the interest in our experience at Aeroporti di Roma. Since the last time we had the opportunity to present the status of operations in Rome many developments have taken place. We last presented to the joint committee in 2020. We can report on the progress and on developments on the field here in Fiumicino.

The current situation with the vaccination campaign in Italy is that we are approaching approximately 30% of the population having at least one dose of a vaccine. The vaccination campaign has been rolled out and has been gaining speed in the past weeks and months but we still have a view in the airport as I reported in Rome, to the aviation industry, that for some months or maybe years, we will have to coexist with the coronavirus in our system. We will have to be strict and effective in continuing to adopt all the necessary prevention measures and ensuring testing protocols are robust and efficient. I am glad to have the opportunity to report to the committee about this.

With regard to safe transportation, the safety protocols have remained the same since the first wave of the pandemic in Italy. A thorough set of rules was established by law in our country in April and May 2020. The airport industry adopted and consistently follow those rules. At this stage, we do not have any outbreaks due to procedural gaps or failure to comply with the rules. The risk of infection onboard is minimal when preventive measures are properly adopted by airports and airlines. The focus since last autumn, on the state's side, has been to avoid spreading infection across regions. As we stated as an airport, the trust-based quarantines adopted by Italy and many other EU countries, and not only European, proved not to be the best tool that we have available due to the fact that it is difficult to enforce.

Travel protocols based on pre-departure testing and, where necessary, on the repetition of a test upon arrival are, in our opinion, the best way forward while the vaccination campaign is rolled out. Covid-tested flights, as we named them in Fiumicino, are a strategy that we started in autumn 2020. In September 2020, we had the first Covid-tested domestic flight from Rome to Milan. We did it not because Rome and Milan, within the same country, showed different risk levels, but because we wanted to prove at the time that Covid testing could be efficiently and safely integrated in the airport process. We were successful and continued that testing on the domestic routes for five months but, on 23 November 2020, the Italian Government passed a law that approved the start of the experimentation with the first transoceanic Covid-tested corridor between some locations in the USA, namely New York City's international airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Rome-Fiumicino. This traded trust-based quarantine on arrival for a double negativity control for 100% of passengers.

The first Covid-tested flight was on 8 December 2020. It was an Alitalia flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Rome-Fiumicino. It was followed a few days later by the first flight by Delta Airlines between Atlanta and Rome. We continue to adopt the protocol. I will show the results. Now there are four airlines operating five routes between the USA and Rome-Fiumicino, for a total of 18 arrivals per week. We have 18 flights using this protocol arriving from the USA to Rome-Fiumicino and 18 flights departing. The protocol states that passengers have to test negative for Covid in the 48 hours before boarding. Both molecular and antigen tests are accepted by our authorities. If they test negative in the 48 hours before departure, they can board the plane and once they disembark in Rome, they are immediately retested by the health authorities of the region of Rome in co-operation with the airport, with a rapid antigen test.

The protocol has been adopted by the UN World Tourism Organization as a viable strategy to restart tourism as a reference benchmark worldwide. It became a model for other locations in Italy and elsewhere. It was approved for flights to Milan, for example, in early way.

Regarding the results, as of 2 May 2021, we had 12,036 arriving passengers pretested according to the protocol in our airport. The first test with the negative result was taken by these passengers before leaving the USA. Some 29 passengers out of these 12,036 tested positive with rapid testing but were not confirmed as positive by molecular testing, so there were 29 false positives. Some 15 passengers tested positive with antigen testing and were confirmed by molecular testing. There were 15 confirmed Covid cases out of 12,036 people, which is 0.12%. The second barrier of testing in Rome resulted in identifying 1.2 passengers out of every 1,000 arriving as having Covid, who were handled in accordance with healthcare provisions. It means that the persons who tested negative on the first test and the second test amounted to 11,992.

In co-operation with the health authorities, we did a follow-up analysis of people in the 14 days after entering the country and we did not find evidence of a significantly higher number of persons who tested positive after having tested negative at departure and arrival. It is difficult to conduct this investigation and it is beyond the competence of an airport authority or airport operator like ourselves. In the investigation, we did not find any evidence that the numbers were significantly different. An analysis should be done if a person tests positive ten days after the moment since entering the country to determine where he or she was infected. Our authorities consider this result excellent with regard to risk minimisation and operational effectiveness. The passengers were satisfied with their experience and, in almost 100% of cases, they would recommend it to others and to extend the trials. We are in discussions with the government to extend the number of locations in the US that can be connected via Covid-tested flights.

For the time being, even our Prime Minister and many ministers confirm that this protocol is a viable protocol. In the second part of May, even if decisions were not taken at this stage, but they are due in the next days, we expect that this will be used as an effective tool for a safe restart of tourism to Italy.

Finally, we think that preflight testing should be extended. Indeed, the government has been doing that because now travelling to Italy, and to many other countries in the EU, can be done only if there is a negative test before boarding. We think that the utilisation of digital platforms is of absolute importance. We have worked consistently on this matter in the past six months. Since early January, we piloted also a health app by using one of the platforms available on the market, in our case, AOKpass, and we are actively co-operating at a European level and a national level for the digital green certificates. On the European digital green certificates, we are supporting and working with our colleagues from Brussels of the organisation, the association of European airports, and we are working with our government for the national digital green certificate.

We expect that there will be an increase of the traffic flows over the summer. We do not know exactly when this will happen but we expect that it will happen. The digital platforms are a key aspect of a safe restart of air travel. We are, as I say, supporting fully our government and the European authorities to make this happen.