BERLIN (AP) – The German government decided on Thursday to temporarily restore border controls along its southeastern border after designating the Czech Republic and parts of Austria as “mutation areas” due to the high number of cases of variant coronaviruses, reported the German news agency dpa.
Temporary border controls and certain entry restrictions will begin on Sunday at midnight, the dpa said.
Travelers from certain areas of Austria or the Czech Republic will have to provide proof of a negative coronavirus test to enter Germany, a requirement that will represent an obstacle for thousands of cross-border workers.
It was not clear how long the border controls would last.
Bavarian Governor Markus Soeder, whose state borders Austria and the Czech Republic, said on Thursday that if the federal government designated the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region as areas of change, Bavaria would request permission to erect border posts where travelers who fail to attend a negative COVID-19 test would be rejected.
Soeder said that all regions of Bavaria with high rates of coronavirus infection, except one, are located on the German-Czech border.
He praised the measures taken by the Czech Republic to curb the spread of variants of the virus and criticized authorities in Tyrol, saying they did not seem to take the problem seriously.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of Germany’s 16 states agreed on Wednesday to extend the country’s current pandemic blockade until at least March 7, partly due to fears about more contagious variants.
Schools and hairdressers will be able to open earlier, although with strict hygiene measures.
In a speech to Parliament on Thursday, Merkel defended her government’s decision to set a lower infection target to make blocking even easier: a number of new weekly cases per 100,000 under 35.
“The virus does not follow dates, the virus follows numbers of infections,” she told lawmakers.
Germany’s disease control agency said there were just over 64 cases per 100,000 inhabitants across the country last week, up from more than 200 before Christmas.
The Robert Koch Institute on Thursday added 10,237 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and 666 deaths to Germany’s total, bringing the country’s overall case count since the start of the pandemic to 2.31 million and the death toll to 63,635.