BERLIN (AP) – The German government decided on Thursday to temporarily restore border controls along the southeastern border after designating the Czech Republic and parts of Austria as “areas of mutation” due to their high number of cases of coronavirus variants, the German news agency dpa reported.
Temporary border controls and certain entry restrictions will begin at midnight on Sunday, Dpa reported.
Travelers coming from certain parts of Austria or the Czech Republic will need to provide proof of having undergone a negative coronavirus test to enter Germany, a requirement that will pose a barrier to thousands of cross-border workers.
It was not clear how long the border checks would last.
Bavarian Governor Markus Soeder, whose state borders both Austria and the Czech Republic, said earlier on Thursday that if the federal government designated the Czech Republic and the Austrian region of Tyrol as areas of mutation, Bavaria would request permission to establish border posts where travelers cannot present a negative COVID-19 test would be rejected.
Soeder said all regions of Bavaria with high coronavirus infection rates, except one, are located on the German-Czech border.
He praised the measures taken by the Czech Republic to stem the spread of virus variants and criticized the authorities in Tyrol, who said they did not seem to take the matter seriously.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of the 16 German states agreed late Wednesday to extend the country’s current pandemic lockdown until at least March 7, partly because of fears of more contagious variants.
Schools and hairdressers can 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 further ease the lockdown: a number of new weekly cases per 100,000 residents under 35.
“The virus doesn’t track dates, the virus tracks the number of infections,” she told lawmakers.
The German disease control agency said there were just over 64 cases per 100,000 residents across the country in the past week, up from more than 200 before Christmas.
The Robert Koch Institute on Thursday added 10,237 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and 666 deaths to Germany’s totals, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 2.31 million since the start of the pandemic and the death toll to 63,635.