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Saturday October 17, 2020
The road to the Baltic Sea is still not free for travelers from risk areas within Germany. But the state with the strictest lodging ban is now at least removing the quarantine requirement if vacationers can give a negative test.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is loosening its strict requirements for tourists from German crown risk areas starting next Wednesday. This was announced by SPD Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig in Schwerin. Consequently, guests in affected areas will only need to submit a negative corona test that is no older than 48 hours. The previous quarantine obligation is no longer applicable.
So far, in addition to a current negative corona test for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a 14-day quarantine was required immediately after entry. The waiting time could be shortened if a second test after five to seven days was also negative. For day-trippers from risky regions, entry to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will not yet be possible, according to Schwesig. The quarantine obligation also continues to apply to entries from foreign risk areas.
The prime minister said the other federal states had taken sufficient precautionary measures for risk areas after the country’s leaders’ Crown summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel last Wednesday. This allows Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to simplify its own rules.
Ruling on urgent requests not until next week
With this, the state government is aligning the stricter national regulation for travelers from German risk areas with the regulations in Schleswig-Holstein. Both the regional tourism association and the German hotel and restaurant association (Dehoga) had faced the previous regulations. Greifswald’s Higher Administrative Court (OVG) had received several urgent requests against the state ordinance as of Friday. The OVG had announced that it would make a decision on this in the next week.
Thilo Naumann, a hotelier from Usedom, is one of the plaintiffs. He said regulations, according to which tourists from corona risk areas must be quarantined for at least five days, even with negative test results, are unreasonable and disproportionate. Support came from Dehoga and the FDP, among others.
The mayor of Rostock does not believe in the rule
According to the tourism industry, the entry regulations for visitors to Corona hotspots in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania amounted to an accommodation ban. The industry, which was on the rise again in the summer season after the crown-related full stop of travel in the spring in the Northeast, suffered a setback in the fall. The president of the Tourism Association of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Tobias Woitendorf, put the losses according to initial estimates at 30 percent of sales or between 60 and 80 million euros.
Rostock Mayor Claus Madsen had previously classified the entry restrictions and accommodation ban as excessive. “If everyone behaves sensibly, people in corona risk areas are no more dangerous than others,” the non-partisan chief of administration of the largest city of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania said in an interview in the “Tagesspiegel” of Berlin. Anyone with a fever or feeling unwell should not work or eat in restaurants. “But walking on the beach is not dangerous,” Madsen said. Also, hotels have strict hygiene requirements.
