Germany will make coronavirus mandatory for travellers returning from high-risk areas, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Monday amid fears of an increase in the number of cases attributed to summer holidays and local outbreaks.
“We want to prevent returning travelers from infecting others without being noticed 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 testing intensified over the weekend after the 16 German states agreed friday to lose evidence for all returning travellers, before testing is mandatory.
After an assembly with state officials on Monday, the Chancellor’s staff leader, 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 analyzed in detail and I think we will succeed in a solution quickly,” he said.
Coronavirus control in the German municipality of Mamming, where an outbreak recorded 174 seasonal positive results Photo: AFP / Christof STACHE
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder had joined a chorus of voices calling for testing to be mandatory for returning tourists.
“We are preparing everything so that if the federal government gives the go-ahead, we can put it into effect immediately,” he said.
However, this resolution has also provoked complaints from those who believe that relying too much on testing can lead to complacency.
“The one-time tests don’t offer security,” Ute Teichert, director 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.”
However, politicians plan to accentuate to isolate infections at an early stage.
Mamming residents have been presented with loose coronavirus controls, with improvised control centers installed in the Photo: AFP/Christof STACHE domain
In Bavaria, Soeder said the state of southern Germany would establish coronavirus sites at its two largest train stations, as well as key highway problems.
In addition to the existing control centres at Bavarian airports, controls will now be presented at Munich and Nuremberg stations, as well as on 3 main dual carriageway routes near the Austrian border.
“We can’t save the crown at all, so the purpose will have to 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 seasonal ones tested positive for the virus on the farm in the municipality of Mamming, most 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 skid them in the remote rural site.
Residents of Mamming Township were presented with loose coronavirus evidence, with makeshift testing centers installed in the area.
A woman who called Brigitte said she would come for the test so she could hug her grandson without being concerned about the spread of the virus.
“I’m too worried that the staff stayed too far apart,” he said. “But I need to be sure.”
To curb new farm outbreaks, Soeder said the state would impose fines on farms that violate regulations at 25,000 euros ($29,400), five times the existing fine.
Germany has had better results 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.
“From what has been done in recent days, with more than 800 instances a day in some cases, we want to go back to a scenario where we are well below 500,” Braun said.