Germany warns upcoming holiday season could increase the coronavirus risk
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Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, warned Sunday that traveling during the upcoming holiday season could increase the coronavirus risk.
“If holidaymakers return from a hotspot to their homes all over Germany, and we’re not able to identify the chains of infection, we would quickly end up in a situation where we would have to implement nationwide measures,” Braun told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagzeitung newspaper.
He said it was the government’s “top priority” to make sure it doesn’t come to that again.
Berlin is hoping a new coronavirus warning app, to be unveiled in a matter of days, will help keep the situation under control. Those who sign up to the voluntary app will be automatically notified if another user in their vicinity has tested positive for COVID-19.
Germany already began opening its borders to neighboring Austria, Switzerland, and France on May 16 under tightly controlled conditions. As of June 15, the country is set to fully relax borders and restrictions on inter-EU travel.
The restart of tourism has sparked concerns among some German doctors about a potential second wave. Hajo Zeep, a senior medical expert from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in the city of Bremen, last month warned that there is still not enough immunity in the population to prevent another spike in infections.
