Infected diplomats are brought home on special flights

Icon: enlarge

Air Force A400M transport aircraft

Photo: Christophe Gateau / DPA

Diplomats and employees of the Federal Foreign Office who fall ill with Covid-19 while working at German missions abroad are entitled to be fetched back to Germany on special ambulance flights.

According to SPIEGEL information, this emerges from a so-called state secretary instruction of the office.

"For reasons of welfare, the Federal Foreign Office enables employees suffering from Covid-19 to be brought back on a special flight in cases where adequate treatment is not possible on site," confirmed a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, six diplomats who were sick have been flown back home; they have been on post in Asia and Africa.

Germany has not closed its missions abroad even in countries where the virus was circulating heavily.

According to the Foreign Office, this means "that many employees continue to live in countries with a high risk of infection".

The key factor for an evacuation, however, is not a standard comparable to that in Germany in the host country, but the question of whether adequate treatment of Covid-19 infected people is possible on site, according to the spokesman.

"The transport must then take place with a special flight for medical evacuation, since infected people cannot travel on commercial flights."

Other EU countries also offer their diplomats repatriation if they contract Corona.

A flight costs 50,000 to more than 100,000 euros

The cost of an ambulance flight would be "in the mid five-digit to low six-digit range," said the ministry, which translates as: In some cases the return costs 50,000 euros, in others more than 100,000 euros.

The Federal Foreign Office advances some of the costs.

It is unclear whether they will then be fully covered by social security and civil servants' allowances.

"The costs incurred for a flight always depend on the individual case," said the Foreign Office.

In order to enable those affected to receive treatment in Germany "unbureaucratically and without potentially life-threatening delays", the Ministry could make advance payments for the costs incurred.

"The assumption of costs takes place for civil servants as well as for collective bargaining employees in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Federal Aid Ordinance and the provisions of social security law."

In all cases, the Foreign Office took the necessary measures "to rule out risks for employees and the population in Germany," the spokesman said.

All retrievals were carried out under medical supervision and in close coordination with the responsible health authorities in Germany.

Bundeswehr brought back individual soldiers with A400M

The Bundeswehr has forged similarly complex and costly corona emergency plans for its soldiers as the Foreign Office.

Since the outbreak of the global pandemic in the spring, the Air Force has repeatedly brought individual soldiers, small groups of infected comrades or suspected cases home with specially dispatched aircraft.

Insiders in the troop speak of almost ten such return actions since spring. 

The return flights - called "relocations" in the German armed forces - always involved a lot of effort.

Sometimes the air force sent a so-called Medevac jet into the operational areas, in other cases a large A400M transport aircraft flew out especially to bring soldiers back.

Mali was flown to several times, but Air Force aircraft also brought infected soldiers home from Afghanistan, Iraq and Lithuania. 

A hastily initiated return campaign from Afghanistan at the beginning of June is still remembered: After the first corona cases were diagnosed in the German contingent of the NATO mission "Resolute Support", one of the transport aircraft took off from Cologne-Wahn for the Hindu Kush.

On the same day, the Federal Police had several of their officers flown out of Afghanistan by private jet. 

This regulation of bringing the soldiers home with their own planes has not changed to this day.

In armed forces circles it is said that the soldiers concerned cannot be repatriated in any other way, since no one else wants to transport pure suspected cases.

Last weekend, the air force carried out another evacuation flight to and from Bamako because a Bundeswehr soldier there was infected with the virus.

Icon: The mirror