Germany on Monday lifted a ban on travellers from India, the UK and three other countries, where the delta variant of coronavirus has been found in the samples of Covid-19 patients. In fact, the variant is the dominant one found in the UK which scuttled the Boris Johnson government’s plan to open up the country.
The Robert Koch Institute, a German federal government agency responsible for disease control and prevention, said that India, Nepal, Russia, Portugal and the UK have been downgraded to “high-incidence areas” from the current categorisation of “areas of variant concern”.
The move lifts a ban on non-German residents and citizens entering the country, allowing anyone to enter as long as they follow quarantine and testing procedures.
Last week Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that Germany would soon relax travel rules on people arriving from the UK due to the Delta variant being widespread in both countries.
“We think that in the foreseeable future those who have received double jabs will then according to our classification… be able to travel again without going into quarantine,” she had said.
