BERLIN (AP) – Germany on Sunday implemented strict border controls with the Czech Republic and the Austrian province of Tyrol in an effort to stop the spread of more contagious coronavirus variants.
The new restrictions that came into force at midnight limit entry into these areas to German citizens and residents, truck drivers, transport and health workers and a few others, who must register online and show a negative coronavirus test.
The German government has warned that some delays at the border are possible, but police said there were no major reservations on Sunday morning.
Infection rates in Germany have fallen steadily in recent weeks, but officials are worried about the possible impact of variants first discovered in the UK and South Africa. Both variants have been reported in Germany, but so far seem to account for only a small proportion of cases.
A significant number of cases of the latter have been discovered in Tyrol, whose residents had to show a recent negative coronavirus test to travel to the rest of Austria on Friday. The spread of the British variant led to the complete blockade of some Czech districts on the border with Germany and Poland.
Bavarian Governor Markus Soeder, speaking at Schirnding on the Czech border, said that “not taking the mutations (the virus) seriously would have significant consequences.”
Soeder, whose state contains half of the German-Czech border and the entire German-Austrian border, noted that the districts on the Czech border have particularly high infection rates.
“In addition, there is a current concern with our Czech partners that it is not clear what will happen to the management of their crown,” Soeder said, pointing to the Czech parliament’s refusal to extend the state of emergency. “We are friends, we help; we welcome Czech patients if desired, but, of course, if there should be no measures at all across the border, this means a significant danger. ”
It was not immediately clear which cross-border commuters would be allowed to enter Germany. Federal Home Secretary Horst Seehofer said those working in “systemically relevant sectors” would be allowed to cross, and authorities would be “pragmatic whenever possible.”
Seehofer abruptly rejected EU criticism of border controls, and Soeder did so. “Brussels can make an important contribution” to the faster movement of the vaccination campaign, he said, but German police will do their job at the border.
On Sunday morning, federal police said 288 of the 717 people checked at the Bavarian-Czech border had been returned because they were not allowed to cross, along with 247 of more than 1,000 people checked at the border with Tyrol.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the 16 German state governors agreed on Wednesday to extend most blockade restrictions until March 7, although schools and hairdressers may open sooner.
They set a new target of 35 new cases per 100,000 population per week before allowing the reopening of small shops, museums and other businesses. This figure rose to 57.4 on Sunday, from almost 200 just before Christmas.
The eastern state of the governor of Saxony warned the Germans not to expect too much too soon.
“Unfortunately, this year there can be no Easter holidays in Germany,” Michael Kretschmer told Bild am Sonntag. “Too much mobility due to travel and tourism already in April would be poison. We would destroy everything we have achieved since mid-December. ”
Hotels and restaurants in Saxony, which contains the rest of Germany’s border with the Czech Republic and were hit hard in the fall and winter, will have to remain closed for Easter and theaters and operas will have to reopen until after Easter, he said.
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