Germany extends travel warning for around 160 countries until end of September

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The German federal government on Wednesday extended its travel warning for more than 160 non-European Union (EU) countries due to COVID-19 until the end of September.

From October onwards, the travel warnings would be replaced with “differentiated travel and security warnings” applying to individual countries, the German Federal Foreign Office said in a statement.

An early lifting of travel warning in country-specific individual cases would be announced separately, according to the Foreign Office.

Unnecessary tourist travel to countries that were not classified as risk areas would still be discouraged if these countries restricted entry to or from Germany, the government stressed in the statement.

For the evaluation, the government would also consider the overall situation in the respective country, such as the state of health systems, when issuing travel warnings.

Following a joint agreement between the Federal Ministry of Health, the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Robert Koch Institute is responsible for publishing the list of international risk areas of COVID-19.

Germany’s COVID-19 cases soar by 1,176 to 253,474

Germany’s COVID-19 cases rose by 1,176 over the past 24 hours to 253,474, the Robert Koch Institute said Wednesday.

The death toll from the disease increased by nine to 9,338 nationwide in the same period, it added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday promised to support public health authorities in Germany in the long-term by creating additional jobs and the modernization of information technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an “unfathomable extra workload” for health authorities in Germany in terms of tracing infection chains, conducting tests or arranging and managing quarantines, Merkel said during her speech at a virtual conference with representatives of the country’s public health service.

The German government allocated four billion euros (4.7 billion U.S. dollars) to support public health authorities until 2026. Around 5,000 new jobs would be created until the end of 2022.