Border controls – including limits on public transport and mandatory testing and quarantine requirements for travelers – are inevitable in the effort to prevent the import of other, more contagious variants of the coronavirus, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Friday -market.
“It means that there will be a transport ban – and without exceptions, tests must be done before entering Germany – and there is a quarantine obligation, ” Spahn told reporters at a health news conference.
Spahn said that – despite the new variants – overall infection rates in Germany were falling.
” To protect the population from virus mutations – that’s why the federal government decided yesterday declare the Czech Republic, Tyrol and Slovakia as variant areas of the coronavirus,“said the minister.
Some context: On Thursday, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Germany was temporarily imposing border controls and limiting travel from the Czech Republic and the Austrian province of Tyrol due to an increase in infections from the most contagious variants of the coronavirus . The restrictions take effect on Sunday.
On Friday, Germany recorded 9,860 new coronavirus infections – down 3,048 cases compared to the same day last week. Deaths from coronaviruses in Germany stood at 556 in the past 24 hours – down 299 from last week’s Friday.
The most recent data from the country’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), indicate that the number of new infections per 100,000 residents could drop to less than 60 this weekend, Spahn said.
On Friday, 5.7 million coronavirus vaccines have been distributed in the 16 federal states of Germany, with about 3.6 million vaccinations performed so far. 2,490,423 – 3% of the population of Germany received the first injection, while 1,178,725 received the second injection, according to RKI data. Spahn said Germany would distribute 8 million coronavirus vaccines by the end of next week.
Germany is currently administering the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.