The Italian goverment is issuing new, tighter, COVID-19 restrictions but won’t follow through with a lockdown, and has also decided to let the cruise industry to continue to operate from Italian ports.

Text relating to a so-called navigation ban for passenger ships has been removed from new Italian-goverment led COVID-19 directives.

Instead, officials will let cruise ships operate based on health and safety protocols previously approved in August, that led to MSC, Costa and AIDA sailing cruises from Italian ports.

AIDA has since paused operations with a lockdown in Germany, its main source market, while MSC and Costa continue sailing in Italy.