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Germany has agreed with France, Austria and Switzerland to ease border controls since the weekend, according to Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. In the past few days, the positive trend in the spread of the infection gives hope that controls can be completely removed in mid-June, he estimates.
German Border Police. Stock Photography.
The long-awaited message comes at a press conference after Wednesday’s government meeting in Berlin. Above all, business trips and visits to family and relatives are now possible, according to Seehofer. At a later stage, further relief is planned.
“If the infection rate develops in the same favorable way that we have seen in recent days … we can imagine that we will have free trips from June 15,” he says.
Border controls against Luxembourg are eliminated at the same time entirely. Controls on the German-Danish border are still under discussion with the Copenhagen government, according to Seehofer. He himself also sees no direct obstacle to their removal, he says.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, raises a warning, recalling the importance of continued discipline in the population.
“It would be depressing to have to reintroduce the restrictions that we want to leave behind, just because we are gagging a lot,” he said in a Bundestag hearing.
German foreign ministers still advise against traveling abroad until June 15.
“We can certainly provide advice for Europe before providing advice for other destinations, if the positive development we see in various countries persists,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, according to the AFP news agency.
Germany has been more successful than other major European countries in dealing with the crown pandemic. Although the country is the most populous in the EU, there are far fewer deaths than, for example, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain.
This weekend, a report from the German Infection Protection Authority stopped the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) as it seemed that the spread of the infection was increasing again. The so-called R number, which indicates how many people each of the infected self-infects, according to Sunday’s statement, increased to 1.1. On Tuesday, RKI again reported an R figure below 1 (0.94), indicating that the spread of the infection is decreasing.
Great interest in German strategy.
Compared to other major European countries, Germany has had relatively few coronary deaths, which has sparked interest in the German strategy.
Unlike Italy and France, for example, Germany has not imposed a general curfew. However, residents are required to spend time with family members and one other person only, and to maintain a distance of 1.5 meters in public.
Germany’s initial position was favorable, with a well-developed health infrastructure and a much larger number of hospital beds and intensive care units per capita than, for example, Sweden. Since then, capacity has been further enhanced, with new specialized clinics for covid-19 patients. Germany has also rated its population to a much higher degree than many other countries.
Christian Drosten, one of Germany’s leading virologists, has highlighted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s research background (as a doctor of physical chemistry) as a positive factor in the fight against infection.
Source: Wall Street Journal, TT
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