Corona crisis in India: Germany largely stops entry

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A patient arrives at a hospital in Kolkata

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PIYAL ADHIKARY / EPA

The corona infection situation in India is dramatic. Because of the rapidly increasing numbers and because of the virus mutation, the federal government has largely stopped travel from the country to Germany. "In order not to endanger our vaccination campaign, travel to India must be significantly restricted," wrote Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) on Saturday in the online service Twitter. Therefore, the government will declare India a virus variant area in the short term.

From Sunday night, according to Spahn, only Germans from India and foreigners who are permanently in Germany will be allowed to enter.

However, you must show a negative corona test before entering Germany and go into a 14-day quarantine after arriving in Germany.

The regulation is to come into force from midnight on Monday.

"We are very worried about the newly discovered virus mutation in India," said Spahn.

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New Delhi reported more than 340,000 new infections within one day and 2,624 deaths on Saturday, which is a new high according to the authorities.

The central government is trying to supply the completely overloaded hospitals with additional oxygen for artificial ventilation of Covid-19 patients.

Overall, the number of people infected since the start of the pandemic is now 16.5 million.

This puts India in second place worldwide behind the USA.

Disastrous relaxations

A double mutation of the coronavirus as well as religious, political and sporting mass events are blamed for the recent massive increase in the number of infections in India.

In the hope that the worst of the corona crisis would be over, the Indian authorities relaxed most of the requirements at the beginning of the year and allowed events from huge wedding celebrations to cricket games to religious ceremonies again.

The Vice President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lars Schaade, said on Friday that the RKI is monitoring the development of the possibly particularly dangerous virus variant B.1.617.

According to him, this has so far been detected 21 times in Germany.

The assumption that there is a "mutually reinforcing effect" in this double mutant has not yet been proven.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Office asked Germans in India who are not vaccinated against Corona to consider "a temporary return to Germany until the medical supply situation stabilizes" in the country.

Kuwait also suspended all flights from India on Saturday; the United Arab Emirates had already announced on Thursday that they would impose an exit and entry stop.

Canada has also already banned flights from India and Pakistan.

Switzerland: First case of variant B.1.617 detected

In Switzerland, an infection with the coronavirus variant B.1.617 was detected for the first time.

As the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) announced on Saturday in the online service Twitter, the person concerned was a passenger who had entered Switzerland via a transit airport.

The deliberations on whether India will be placed on the country's risk list are therefore ongoing.

BAG spokesman Daniel Dauwalder said the infected passenger had changed trains in a European country before landing in Switzerland.

On Thursday, the Belgian authorities had already reported evidence of the Corona variant to a group of 20 Indian students who had come to Belgium via a stopover in Paris.

jus / AFP