BERLIN (AP) – The German government on Thursday decided to temporarily reinstate border controls along its southeastern border after designating the Czech Republic and parts of Austria as “mutation zones” because of their high numbers. of coronavirus cases, as reported by the German news agency dpa.
Temporary border controls and some entry restrictions will begin Sunday at midnight, Dpa reported.
Travelers coming from certain areas of Austria or the Czech Republic will have to present evidence of a negative coronavirus test to enter Germany, a requirement that will be an obstacle for thousands of cross-border workers.
It was unclear how long the border controls would last.
The governor of Bavaria, Markus Soeder, whose state borders Austria and the Czech Republic, said earlier on Thursday that if the federal government designated the Czech Republic and the Australian region of Tyrol as mutation zones, Bavaria would request permission to erect border posts where non-presenting travelers would disable a negative COVID-19 test.
Soeder said all but one of Bavaria’s regions with high coronavirus infection are on the German-Czech border.
He praised the measures taken by the Czech Republic to contain the spread of virus variants and criticized the Tyrolean authorities, saying they did not seem to take the issue seriously.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of the 16 German states agreed on Wednesday afternoon to extend the current closure of the pandemic until at least March 7, in part out of fears about more contagious variants.
Schools and hairdressers will be able to open earlier, albeit with strict hygiene measures.
In a speech to Parliament on Thursday, Merkel defended her government’s decision to set a lower infection target to facilitate the blockade: a number of new weekly cases per 100,000 people under the age of 35.
“The virus doesn’t follow dates, the virus follows the number of infections,” he told lawmakers.
The German disease control agency said there were just over 64 cases per 100,000 population across the country last week, compared to more than 200 before Christmas.
The Robert Koch Institute on Thursday added 10,237 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 666 deaths to Germany’s totals, bringing the total number of cases in the country since the start of the pandemic to 2.31 million and the number of deaths to 63,635.