BERLIN (AP) – Germany announced on Sunday that travelers from the Moselle region in northeastern France will face additional restrictions because of the high rate of variant coronavirus cases there.
The German disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said it would add Moselle to the list of “variants of concern” that already includes countries like the Czech Republic, Portugal, the United Kingdom and parts of Austria.
Travelers in these areas must have a recent negative coronavirus test before entering Germany.
The Moselle region, in northeastern France, includes the city of Metz and borders the German states of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Clement Beaune, the French minister for European affairs, said that France regrets the decision and is in talks with Germany to try to ease the measures for 16,000 Moselle residents working on the border. Specifically, he said that France does not want them to face the daily PCR virus tests that Germany applies elsewhere for travelers across some borders.
“We don’t want that,” he said.
Beaune said France is pushing for easier and faster testing methods and testing every 2-3 days instead of daily. More talks are expected on Sunday, he said.
The weekly rate of new infections in Moselle, at more than 300 per 100,000 people, is well above the average for eastern France and the national average. In Germany, the number of cases per week today is almost 64 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Robert Koch Institute registered 7,890 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Germany on the last day, bringing the total to more than 2.4 million cases. The death toll increased by 157 to 70,045.
German officials have warned that variants of the virus like the first detected in Britain – known as B.1.1.7 – can spread more easily and increase the rate of infection at a time when Germany is slowly relaxing its blocking measures.
“There are two trains running towards each other,” said Karl Lauterbach, an epidemiologist and legislator with the center-left Social Democratic Party.
He asked Germany to prioritize giving an initial dose of vaccine to as many people as possible, as some other countries have done, including the AstraZeneca injection currently reserved for children under 65. Companies and schools should also run weekly tests, or more, when possible, and those with negative results will also be able to visit stores again.
Bavarian Governor Markus Soeder also called for a change in the way the AstraZeneca injection is used. The vaccine was avoided by many who hoped to get the injection made by the German company BioNTech and Pfizer, or a similar one made by the American company Moderna.
Soeder said on Sunday that it is “an absurd situation” that many who want to be vaccinated cannot, while those who can do not.
“What remains must be released,” he said.
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