BERLIN (AP) – Germany announced on Sunday that travelers from the Moselle region in northeastern France will face additional restrictions due to the high rate of variant coronavirus cases there.
The German disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, has said it will add Moselle to the list of “areas of concern” that already include countries such as the Czech Republic, Portugal, the United Kingdom and parts of Austria.
Travelers in these areas must have a recent coronavirus-negative test before entering Germany.
The Moselle region in northeastern France includes the city of Metz and borders the German states of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Clement Beaune, the French minister for European affairs, said France regretted the decision and was in talks with Germany to try to ease measures for 16,000 Moselle residents working across the border. Specifically, he said that France does not want them to cope with the daily PCR virus tests that Germany has applied elsewhere to travelers across borders.
“We don’t want that,” he said.
Beaune said France is working to make testing methods easier and faster and to test every 2-3 days, rather than daily. More talks were expected later Sunday, he said.
The weekly rate of new infections in the Moselle, from over 300 to 100,000 people, is well above the average for the eastern region of France and the national average. In Germany, the number of cases per week currently stands at almost 64 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Robert Koch Institute registered 7,890 cases recently confirmed by COVID-19 in Germany in the last day, bringing the total to over 2.4 million cases. The death toll rose to 157 from 70,045.
German officials have warned that virus variants such as the one first detected in the UK – known as B.1.1.7 – could spread more easily and could fuel the rate of infection at a time when Germany is relaxing. slowly blocking measures.
“There are two trains rushing to each other,” said Karl Lauterbach, an epidemiologist and parliamentarian for the center-left Social Democrats.
He called on Germany to give priority to administering as many people as possible an initial dose of vaccine, as other countries have done, including with the AstraZeneca shot currently reserved for those under 65 years of age. , and those with a negative result should be able to visit stores again.
Bavarian Governor Markus Soeder has also called for a change in the way AstraZeneca fire is used. The vaccine was avoided by many who hoped to obtain photos taken by the German company BioNTech and Pfizer, or a similar one taken by the American company Moderna.
Soeder said on Sunday that it is an “absurd situation” that many who want to get vaccinated cannot do, while those who cannot want to.
“Anything left should be released,” he said.
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