BERLIN (AP) – Germany announced on Sunday that travelers from the northeastern Moselle region of France face additional restrictions due to the high number of cases of coronavirus.
Germany’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said it would add Moselle to the list of “variants of concern” areas that already include countries such as the Czech Republic, Portugal, the United Kingdom and parts of Austria.
Travelers from those areas must set up a recent negative coronavirus 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 the measures for 16,000 Moselle residents working across the border. He specifically said that France did not want them to experience the daily PCR virus tests that Germany had applied elsewhere to travelers along some borders.
“We do not want it,” he said.
Beaune said France strives for the use of easier, faster testing methods and for testing every 2-3 days rather than daily. More talks are expected later Sunday, he said.
The weekly rate of new infections in Moselle, with more than 300 per 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 is currently almost 64 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The Robert Koch Institute recorded 7890 cases of COVID-19 in Germany in the past day, taking the total to more than 2.4 million cases. The death toll rose by 157 to 70,045.
German officials have warned that virus variants such as those first detected in Britain – known as B.1.1.7 – could spread more easily and fuel the rate of infection at a time when Germany is slowly loosening its closure measures.
“There are two trains chasing each other,” said Karl Lauterbach, an epidemiologist and lawmaker at the center-left Social Democrats.
He called on Germany to give as many people as possible an initial dose of vaccination, as some other countries have done, including the AstraZeneca survey currently reserved for those under 65. Businesses and schools should also do weekly tests, or more than once, and those with a negative result should also be able to visit stores again.
The governor of Bavaria, Markus Soeder, also called for a change in the way the AstraZeneca shot is used. Many people have stopped the vaccine from hoping that the German company BioNTech and Pfizer, or a similar one, will be made by the American firm Moderna.
Soeder said Sunday it is an “absurd situation” that many who want to vaccinate cannot, while those who do not want to.
“All that is left is just to be released,” he said.
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