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BERLIN: Germany will make coronavirus testing mandatory for travellers returning from high-risk areas, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Monday amid growing fears about the number of cases attributed to summer holidays and local epidemics.
“We want to prevent returning travelers from infecting others without being seen and therefore trigger new chains of infection. So I’ll order mandatory testing for travellers in at-risk spaces,” Spahn wrote on Twitter.
Regulations will take effect next week, the Ministry of Health tweeted, and will be free.
The debate over coronavirus tests intensified over the weekend after the 16 German states agreed on Friday to lose evidence for all returning travelers, they stopped before doing the mandatory tests.
After an assembly with state officials on Monday, the leader of the Chancellery’s staff, Helge Braun, said there is “a great preference for approaching those mandatory tests.”
“The consultation of how this can be implemented will now have to be tested in detail and I think we will succeed in a solution quickly,” he said.
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder had previously joined a growing refrain of voices demanding mandatory testing for returning tourists.
“We’re preparing everything so that if the federal government provides the go-ahead, we can put it into effect right away,” he said.
However, this resolution has also generated complaints from those who say that relying too much on evidence can lead to complacency.
“The one-time tests don’t offer security,” Ute Teichert, head of a national doctors’ agreement, said in an interview with media organization Funke. “On the contrary: they can lead to a false sense of security.”
BAVARIAN FARM EPIDEMIC
However, politicians plan to accentuate to isolate infections early.
In Bavaria, Soeder said the state of southern Germany will establish coronavirus sites at its two largest stations, as well as key highway problems.
In addition to the existing control centres at Bavarian airports, checks will now be presented at Munich and Nuremberg stations, as well as on 3 main motorways near the Austrian border.
“We cannot absolutely save the crown, so the purpose must be to trip over it in time to prevent it from spreading,” Soeder said.
Soeder said Bavaria would also check all seasonal agriculture in the state, following a giant coronavirus outbreak on a giant farm.
Some 500 were quarantined as a result of the outbreak, as at least 174 tested positive per season for the virus on the farm in the municipality of Mamming, the maximum of them from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Workers dressed in masks were noticed on Monday moving on the steps of the boxes used to spread them out on the remote rural site.
Residents of Mamming Township were presented with loose coronavirus controls, with improvised control centers established in the area.
A woman who called Brigitte said she would come for the test, so she could carry her grandson without worrying about the spread of the virus.
“I’m too worried because the staff was staying separately,” he said. “But I have to be sure.”
To stop new farm outbreaks, Soeder said the state would increase fines for farms that break regulations to 825,000 (US$29,400), five times the existing fine.
Germany has done better than many of its neighbors in suppressing the virus, reporting more than 200,000 cases and 9,118 deaths to date, according to the Robert Koch Institute for Disease Control.
But the country has also been affected by repeated coronavirus outbreaks in slaughterhouses, keeping the government on high alert.
“Of what has happened in the last few days, with more than 800 instances a day in some instances, we want to go back to a scenario where we are well below 500,” Braun said.
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