JOHN MACDOUGALL
There will be no general controls at the German external borders, and even for those returning from Portugal and Great Britain there could soon be relief again, regardless of the strong spread of the Delta variant, as Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) announced on Thursday.
No risk countries in the neighborhood
Seehofer said at a joint press conference with Spahn that there would only be checks in the border area as part of a veil manhunt. He pointed out that Germany’s immediate neighbors are no longer risk areas – and that there are no longer any requirements for travelers.
“We are interested in travel from Turkey,” added the Federal Minister of the Interior. “It looks different there.” In contrast to most EU countries, Turkey is classified as a corona risk area, which is why a quarantine obligation continues to apply to travelers from this country.
Travelers can also be screened on parking lots
The small number of car travelers from this country do not justify stationary controls at the border. “I don’t want us to have backlogs as far as Vienna so that we can fish a case out of Turkey.” According to Seehofer’s words, the vehicles will be “diverted” to parking lots near the border, where travelers will then be checked.
Extensive controls when traveling by plane
According to Seehofer, there should still be extensive controls when entering the country by plane. Here, the required travel registration is checked for each passenger. All travelers have to present either a negative test result or proof of vaccination or genetic history.
Tighter restrictions on virus variant areas
Spahn said of the virus variant areas that if the delta variant becomes predominant in Germany and knowing that the double vaccination will also protect this virus variant, “we will look at the situation in the next few days”. “If both of these are confirmed, Portugal and the United Kingdom will then also be able to be treated as high-incidence areas.”
Portugal, like Russia and previously Great Britain, was recently classified as a virus variant area because of the spread of the Delta variant. This means that there are strict restrictions for those returning home. The returnees must be in quarantine for 14 days, even if they have been vaccinated or have recovered. You can’t test yourself either. A ten-day quarantine applies to high-incidence areas, which can be ended after five days if the test result is negative.
Delta variant will soon make up the majority of infections
The particularly contagious Delta variant is also on the rise in Germany. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the proportion of infections with the variant first identified in India in all new corona infections doubled again to 37 percent in the third week of June. The experts assume that Delta will become the dominant virus strain in Germany by this week at the latest.
“Delta will soon be the dominant variant in Germany as well,” said Spahn. He assumes that “we will see in July that Delta accounts for over 70, 80 percent of infections in our country too”.
According to Spahn, only a few of the infections found in Germany can be traced back to an infection abroad. Their share of all registered infections is “as of today” at two percent, as Spahn said. This low rate should be maintained. In the past year it was at times fixed at 50 percent.