Germany is offering more and more freedom to vaccinated and recovered visitors. It will now be easier for them to enter or return to the country.
For tourists returning and coming to Germany, the uniform Corona rules have come into force across the country since last week.
For those who have been fully vaccinated and for those who have been ill and recovered, this means quarantine regulations and testing requirements are no longer mandatory – unless you are arriving from an area with newer, more infectious variants of the virus, the Minister of Health noted. Jens Spahn.
According to a ruling approved by the federal cabinet, unvaccinated people should also be able to avoid pre-normal quarantine within ten days of entry with a negative test result. To do this, they must prove a negative test result. This can also be done by uploading the test results confirmation to the application as a digital record. It is possible to provide the results of a rapid test not older than 48 hours or PCR test results not older than 72 hours.
As explained in the ministry, the decision is also intended to facilitate summer travel to Europe – for example, when vaccinated parents travel with unvaccinated children.
The German Tourism Association has highlighted a “signal of confidence” that once again gives both holidaymakers and service providers hope. “This means that even those who have not yet had the opportunity to get vaccinated can travel without quarantine,” said the president of the association, Norbert Fiebig. He added that now nothing interferes with summer vacations, for example, on the Mediterranean coast, which many Germans dream of. However, he said the federal government is also expanding the general testing requirements for air travelers, which were introduced in late March.
Mr Spahn said the decree establishes uniform entry rules as required for the first time since individual federal states had previously issued decrees. The classification of countries for German holidaymakers comes from data on the website of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The central factor for classification as a “risk zone” is more than 50 reported new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over a seven-day period.
In addition, there are “areas of high incidence” starting at a threshold of 200, as well as “areas with virus variants” with new mutations. When returning from areas with a high incidence, in some cases, quarantine can be reduced if the test result is negative, passed no earlier than five days later. Those returning from areas with variants of the virus will still have to apply home quarantine for 14 days, which cannot be shortened by testing.