Coronavirus DK: New passport, roller coasters, tweeting praise

Danes can now get a COVID-19 passport (DK) if they have tested negative for the coronavirus in the past seven days. They can use it to travel to countries that require such documentation. As soon as the lab has processed your test and released the results, you can go to sundhed.dk (DK), the website where everyone’s health information is stored, and download the passport, which has a document validation number and can be printed. 

Not all countries will recognize this document, however. Some have special requirements, for example that you use their own official form for test results and have it signed by a doctor. You should find out the regulations in force in any country that you are traveling to or through. You can see them on the Danish embassy’s website for the country in question. You can order a test for the coronavirus at coronaprover.dk (DK), which has an English version.

Masks as passport to fun

But if you want to ride a roller coaster at Djursland Sommerland, an amusement park in mid-Jutland, a COVID-19 passport won’t be enough. You will also need a face mask (DK). Face masks have not been mandatory in Denmark and are seen very rarely outside of hospitals and perhaps nursing homes. Since it opened one month ago, Djursland Sommerland has been able to load its roller coasters only to one-quarter of their capacity. It has now received permission from the government and the Patient Safety Authority to make this experiment and fill up the Dragon King with screaming riders. 

“There is no doubt that it is more fun to stand in line for a ride for only ten minutes instead of an hour,” says Henrik B. Nielsen, the director of the amusement park. All the amusement parks in the country are eligible to take part in the experiment. The masks cost an extra DKK 5 ($1), and they can be used only for one ride. “We don’t earn anything from selling these masks,” says Nielsen. “And the policy has actually been very well received by our guests.”

Him again

Danish media have noticed that the word “Denmark” has popped up in a tweet from a country where face masks are becoming the occasion of a civil war, more precisely, from the White House. Along with Germany, Norway and Sweden, the country was cited because “SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS.” Trump threatened to withhold funding for school districts that don’t hold ordinary classes when the school year resumes.

This comes at a time when the US is setting records for new COVID-19 cases and a couple of days after the Orwellian president claimed that the US death rate was “just about THE LOWEST IN THE WORLD!” He may have been too busy playing golf these days to notice that no one has been envying the epidemic conditions in Sweden for some time.