Berlin: In the recent travel development to make travel simple in and out of Germany, the German federal government removed all countries from the country’s COVID high-risk list, entry rules and risk criteria are also being relaxed with effect from Thursday (Mar 3).
As of 03.03.2022, no country is considered in Germany’s “high-risk” list anymore. For this reason, the quarantine obligation upon entry and the digital entry registration will also be abolished, regardless of the country previously visited. The covid proof requirement upon entry applies now to children twelve years of age and older (previously six years). There are still pandemic-related entry restrictions for certain countries, including India. Therefore, travelling from India to Germany is still only possible if there is an important reason for travel or if the applicant has been fully vaccinated.
The country’s disease control centre, the Robert Koch Institute, said that from now on Germany’s list will only include places where high infection rates are linked to variants of COVID-19 that are more virulent than the currently dominant omicron variant, which in many cases leads to relatively mild illness.
That change will result in the current list of “high-risk areas,” which contains dozens of countries and territories, being wiped clean from Thursday on. Health Ministry spokesman Andreas Deffner said Wednesday, however, that Germany will still require people to show proof of vaccination, recent recovery or a negative test to enter the country.
People arriving from “high-risk areas” who either haven’t recovered recently or been fully vaccinated have to self-isolate for 10 days, which can be cut to five with a negative test. Everyone arriving from those areas has to register online before arrival.
In general, anyone returning to Germany will be asked to present proof that they are either vaccinated, recently recovered, or have tested negative for the virus.
