In addition to whole Belgium, Germany also classifies Iceland and individual regions in other European countries as Corona risk areas. German Health Minister Jens Spahn calls on citizens to comply with the Corona regulations – even if that is sometimes annoying. All developments in the ticker.
The federal government has declared all of Belgium, Iceland and individual regions in nine other European countries to be corona risk areas due to the increasing number of infections. The Robert Koch Institute updated its risk list on Wednesday evening, which now includes areas of Great Britain for the first time with Wales and Northern Ireland. In France, the Pays de la Loire and Burgundy (Bourgogne) regions were added. This means that in Germany’s largest neighbouring country, only the Grand Est border region, which was once particularly badly affected by the pandemic, is excluded from classification as a risk area.
In Belgium, only the capital Brussels was recently listed as a risk area. The expansion to the entire state now also affects the border regions with North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. For the first time, the federal government added areas in the two Baltic states of Lithuania and Estonia to the risk list. There were also regions in Ireland, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania.
But there is also good news: For Freiburg (Friborg) in Switzerland and the Croatian holiday destinations Zadar and Sibenik-Knin, the status as a risk area has been lifted.
The classification as a risk area and the subsequent travel warning are issued if the number of new corona infections exceeds the mark of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. The travel warning is not a ban, but is intended to have a significant deterrent effect especially for tourists. However, it also has a positive side for consumers: it allows vacationers to cancel bookings free of charge.
With the new decisions of the federal government, 17 out of 27 EU countries are now at least partially corona risk areas, Belgium, Spain, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg are even completely. Iceland does not belong to the European Union but to the Schengen area which is free of border controls.
Poland is the only one of Germany’s nine neighboring countries that is not yet on the risk list. But the number of infections is also increasing there. Among the nine EU countries without a corona risk area are the popular holiday countries Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus.