In a few days, Tülay and Mehmet will be Önal [Name geändert] fly from Turkey to Germany. Your son lives there, has had his first child and wants to get married. That’s why the new grandparents got a visa as an exception during the pandemic. Since Turkey is a corona risk area, the Önals have to meet additional requirements. The “digital entry registration” of the Federal Ministry of Health is mandatory. Fortunately, Turkish is one of the 15 languages offered by the system.
The Önals want to be tested at the airport the day before their departure
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In addition, the Önals – although they were recently vaccinated – must present the negative result of a PCR test when checking in at the airport, which must not be older than 24 hours. The couple is a little excited. “We’re a bit worried that we won’t be let in in the end,” Tülay Önal said in an interview with DW.
The negative test is enough for entry
Worries that are probably unfounded. The Önals fly to Cologne / Bonn, so they land in North Rhine-Westphalia. Compared to other federal states, the requirements there are less strict. People entering from high-risk and high-risk areas do not have to be quarantined. Only those who come from a so-called virus mutation area have to enter it. For everyone else, the negative test result you brought with you is sufficient.
Around 40,000 German vacationers have flown to Mallorca and are now coming back
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According to federal law, since the end of March, everyone who is flying in from abroad has to have this in their luggage anyway. An obligation with which the federal government reacted to the numerous trips to Mallorca, but also to other holiday regions. The Balearic Island is no longer a risk area since March 14th. As a result, flight bookings boomed. From March 26th to April 5th, the Spanish airport operator Aena counted more than 530 flight connections to and from Germany. Despite all the appeals from German politicians to please spend the holidays at home.
Back to school and to work
Little by little, the Easter holidays are coming to an end all over Germany. Parents have to go back to work, and school has already started again in some of the 16 federal states. Most of them follow on April 12th, in a few the school holidays do not end until April 19th. There are no uniform guidelines as to whether the students are taught in schools or at home. Each federal state makes its own decision, depending on the number of infections.
However, the responsible ministers of education agree that there should be as much classroom teaching as possible. “Irresponsible” calls this the chairman of the education and training teachers’ union, Udo Beckmann. “We know that since schools have been open, new infections have risen rapidly in the age segment of schoolchildren, especially among younger people.”
Can intensive testing be the solution?
The ministers of education want to slow down this development with comprehensive corona tests. “The test options are to be expanded so that all schoolchildren, teachers and other school employees can be offered the opportunity for a self-test twice a week,” said the incumbent chairman of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK), Brandenburg’s Education Minister Britta Ernst (SPD) .
In very few schools, the tests are carried out by specialist staff, as here in Dresden
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A regulation that was initiated in Berlin before the holidays. The Senate, as the state government is called here, delivered tests to the schools, which were then passed on to the students. It didn’t go without breakdowns. Instead of the promised ten tests per student, there were only six in many places and some of them were supplied with test sticks that were unusable and then had to be collected again.
The devil is in the details
But it is not just such mishaps that raise doubts that the test strategy can be successful. It is questionable whether young students in particular are able to use the tests properly. It must have come up with someone who has never worked in a school, according to the teachers’ union for education and science.
But what can an alternative look like? In some schools, students are tested by specialist staff in the morning before class. But that takes a lot of time and is also much more expensive than issuing self-tests. Due to difficulties with the tests, North Rhine-Westphalia has now ordered distance lessons for pupils again – except for final classes.
What’s next in the company?
For a long time, infections played a subordinate role in school, but also in the workplace. In mid-March, however, the Robert Koch Institute stated in a report on the infection situation that there were “numerous outbreaks” not only in private households, daycare centers and increasingly also in schools, but also in the “professional environment”. “Massive efforts to contain outbreaks and chains of infection” are now required.
Those who cannot work at home should be tested regularly for a corona infection
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The federal government is therefore urging companies to allow more home offices and to regularly test employees for whom this is not possible. At the beginning of March, the employers’ associations signed a voluntary commitment in which they promise to do so. But can politics rely on it? “It is astonishing how much has been achieved”, praised Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, for whom the commitment is enough, after a meeting with business associations on Thursday. But it needs a further increase.
Is the mandatory test coming?
After a joint monitoring, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Labor come to the conclusion that currently only half of the companies offer their employees at least one test per week. Other companies are planning to do so, so that a total of 69 percent of the companies would meet the voluntary commitment now or shortly.
That is not enough for the Chancellor. “If the vast majority of the German economy – and that has to go in the direction of 90 percent – does not offer its employees tests, then we will proceed with regulatory measures in the occupational health and safety ordinance,” announced Angela Merkel in the Bundestag in mid-March. A decision on compulsory testing in companies is expected to be made in the coming week.
What’s next now?
The federal states hope that by significantly intensifying the corona tests they can prevent another hard lockdown like in spring 2020. The next few weeks will show whether this will work.
The Turkish couple Önal will then no longer be in Germany. Their visit will last two weeks, then they will fly back to Istanbul. The conditions for the return journey are the same as the conditions for entering Germany. They have to fill out a form for the Turkish Ministry of Health and they have to present the negative result of a corona test after landing. That is enough in Turkey to avoid being sent into quarantine.
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