The Regional Health Authority has approved the Contingency Plan presented by the Azores Rallye organization, an event which imprints the return of motorsport to the biggest island of the archipelago, and heads to the São Miguel´s roads on the upcoming 16th, 17th and 18th of September.
The Azores Rallye Organization Committee, along with the Regional Health Authority and the Monitoring Committee of the Fight Against the Pandemic, have gathered the necessary conditions to ensure that the undertaking of the Region´s biggest sports event safeguards the public health in pandemic times.
The great changes in the competition´s format, a result of the implementation of the contingency plan, are the absence of the Opening Ceremony and the City Stage, where the teams would usually present the public with spectacular runs throughout the Av. Infante D. Henrique of Ponta Delgada.
Another change will be the public restriction from the Service Park and the Secretariat, located at Portas do Mar, allowing only for the presence of team and organization members, duly identified and accredited, presenting a valid EU digital COVID certificate of vaccination or proving a negative result to the RT-PCR test.
However, public will be allowed along the special stages, as long as procedures and mitigating conducts for the COVID-19 pandemic, determined by the health authorities concerning social distancing, use of masks, hand sanitizing and gathering of groups of people, are met.
According to Helena Prisca, responsible for the Covid-19 team of the Azores Rallye, “upholding the rules imposed by the contingency plan is fundamental to the success not only sports wise, but also in which concerns the public health”.
Rui Moniz, president of the Organization Committee for the race and of the Grupo Desportivo Comercial directorate, expects “the Azoreans to maintain the exemplary behavior they have gotten us used to. The future of the Azores Rallye, namely its maintenance at FIA ERC, still depends on it”.
All information related to procedures and conducts to adopt, in the scope of mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic, are available at https://www.azoresrallye.com/pt-pt/covid-19-pt/