Germany lifts general travel warnings for COVID-19 risk areas

BERLIN, June 30– Germany is set to lift its COVID-19 travel warnings for risk areas with a coronavirus infection rate above 50 cases per 100,000 people on July 1 as planned, the Federal Foreign Office confirmed on Wednesday. Affecting more than 80 countries worldwide, the “improvement of the epidemiological situation in Germany and large parts of Europe, the…

BERLIN, June 30 (Xinhua) — Germany is set to lift its COVID-19 travel warnings for risk areas with a coronavirus infection rate above 50 cases per 100,000 people on July 1 as planned, the Federal Foreign Office (AA) confirmed on Wednesday.

Travel warnings for countries with a particularly high incidence rate — above 200 — as well as for COVID-19 variant areas remain in force, the AA said. Nonessential tourist travel to countries classified as risk areas is still discouraged.

Affecting more than 80 countries worldwide, the “improvement of the epidemiological situation in Germany and large parts of Europe, the advancing vaccinations and the introduction of the Digital COVID Certificate (DCC)” made the lifting possible, the Foreign Office noted.

As of Tuesday, more than 30.3 million Germans had been fully vaccinated, bringing the country’s vaccination rate to 36.5 percent, according to the epidemiological watchdog Robert Koch Institute (RKI). One COVID-19 vaccine dose has already been administered to 54.5 percent of Germany’s adult population.

According to a YouGov survey conducted on behalf of the German Press Agency (dpa) and published on Wednesday, almost half of the respondents considered the lifting of travel warnings to be wrong, while only 38 percent supported the decision.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas defended the lifting of the travel warning. “If there are positive developments, there is no reason to maintain restrictions,” he said on Tuesday on the margins of the Group of Twenty (G20) foreign ministers’ meeting in Matera, Italy. Enditem