Border controls – including restrictions on public transport and mandatory testing and quarantine requirements for passengers – are inevitable in the effort to prevent further infectious variants of coronavirus mutations, Health Minister said German Jens Spahn Friday.
“This means that a prohibition of transport – and without exceptions tests must be carried out before entering Germany – and it is a quarantine duty, ” Spahn told reporters at a news conference.
Spahn went on to say that – despite the new versions – overall disease rates in Germany were falling.
” To protect the population from virus mutations – this is why the federal government decided yesterday the designation of the Czech Republic, Tyrol and Slovakia as coronavirus-variable regions,“said the minister.
Some context: On Thursday, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that Germany was temporarily pushing border inspections and restricting travel from the Czech Republic and the Austrian region of Tyrol due to a spike in diseases of the variables. new coronavirus, which was more contagious. The restrictions will take effect on Sunday.
On Friday, Germany registered 9,860 new coronavirus infections – a fall of 3,048 cases compared to the same day last week. German coronavirus deaths stood at 556 within the last 24 hours – a drop of 299 compared to Friday last week.
The latest data from the country’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) the number of new infections per 100,000 residents could fall below 60 this weekend, Spahn said.
As was Friday, 5.7 million coronavirus vaccines have been distributed across 16 German federal states, with around 3.6 million vaccines made to date. 2,490,423 – 3% of the German population got the first sight, and 1,178,725 got the second sight, according to RKI data. Spahn said Germany would release 8 million coronavirus vaccines by the end of next week.
Germany is currently administering the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.