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What’s Germany’s advice for travelling to the UK?

On Monday the German government replaced its blanket travel warning with advice for most EU countries and states. However Germany advises against travel to the UK. Here's what it says.

Published: 15 June 2020 09:45 CEST
Updated: 15 June 2020 11:31 CEST
What's Germany's advice for travelling to the UK?
Heathrow Airport on June 8th. Photo: DPA

On Monday June 15th, the Federal Foreign Office removed a warning against travelling for non-essential reasons to 27 European countries.

The warning has been replaced with detailed travel advice for each country. The Foreign Office website includes information on the infection situation in countries, entry requirements, possible restrictions on freedom of movement and hygiene rules.

However, Germany is recommending that residents do not travel to some countries.

The Foreign Office has strongly recommended that people in Germany do not travel to the UK, Ireland and Malta because in these countries a two-week quarantine is still required on entry.

What does the UK advice say?

In the UK advice section, the Foreign Office states: “The spread of Covid-19 continues to lead to restrictions in international air and travel and disruption of public life.

“Non-essential tourist travel to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, including British Overseas Territories, is currently strongly discouraged due to the need for a 14-day quarantine on entry.

“The number of new infections is still high according to the government (alert level 4). In view of the different counting methods and testing procedures within Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a considerable number of unreported cases are also possible.

“All persons entering Great Britain and Northern Ireland are generally required to register electronically before entering the country and are subject to a 14-day domestic quarantine.

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“Registration and quarantine were introduced on June 8th 2020 and are to be reviewed every 3 weeks, with the first review taking place on June 29th 2020.”

The advice goes on to say that the electronic declaration is intended to enable UK authorities to follow up any detected Covid-19 infections.

“Therefore, a lot of information including the means of transport and the place where the quarantine will take place has to be provided,” says the German Foreign Office information.

Some groups, including commuters, are exempt from quarantine but not from registration, says the information.

The German government website says that flight and travel connections to and from Germany are “available, but currently still limited”.

READ ALSO: These are the airlines resuming flights to and from Germany

The Foreign Office website also provides information on restrictions in place across the UK (such as in England, Scotland and Wales), and what is currently open and closed.

It's unclear if the quarantine will continue after it is reviewed on June 29th. The German government has said it will continually update the travel advice on the Foreign Office website to reflect the current situation in countries.

There is currently no quarantine requirement for people travelling to Germany from EU states, as well as the states of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the UK (because the Brexit transition period is still in place until the end of 2020).

However, if an EU country reports an increase in coronavirus infections (over the last seven days the number of new infections in the respective country amounts to more than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants), individual states in Germany can order people returning to go into 14-day self isolation.

 

 

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COVID-19 RULES

End of the pandemic? What the expiry of Sweden’s Covid laws really means

With the expiry of Sweden's two temporary Covid-19 laws, the downgrading of the virus's threat classification, and the end of the last travel restrictions, April, officially at least, marks the end of the pandemic. We explain what it means.

Published: 1 April 2022 13:07 CEST
End of the pandemic? What the expiry of Sweden's Covid laws really means

What are the two laws which expire on April 1st? 

Sweden’s parliament voted last week to let the two temporary laws put in place to battle the Covid-19 pandemic expire on April 1st.

The first law is the so-called Covid-19 law, or “the law on special restrictions to limit the spread of the Covid-19 illness”, which was used during the pandemic to temporarily empower the authorities to limit the number of visitors to shops, gyms, and sports facilities. It also gave the government power to limit the number of people who could gather in public places like parks and beaches. 

The second law was the “law on temporary restrictions at serving places”. This gave the authorities, among other things, the power to limit opening times, and force bars and restaurants to only serve seated customers.  

What impact will their expiry have? 

The immediate impact on life in Sweden will be close to zero, as the restrictions imposed on the back of these two laws were lifted months ago. But it does means that if the government does end up wanting to bring back these infection control measures, it will have to pass new versions of the laws before doing so. 

How is the classification of Covid-19 changing? 

The government decided at the start of February that it would stop classifying Covid-19 both as a “critical threat to society” and “a disease that’s dangerous to the public” on April 1st.

These classifications empowered the government under the infectious diseases law that existed in Sweden before the pandemic to impose health checks on inbound passengers, place people in quarantine, and ban people from entering certain areas, among other measures. 

What impact will this change have? 

Now Covid-19 is no longer classified as “a disease that’s dangerous to the public”, or an allmänfarlig sjukdom, people who suspect they have caught the virus, are no longer expected to visit a doctor or get tested, and they cannot be ordered to get tested by a court on the recommendation of an infectious diseases doctor. People with the virus can also no longer be required to aid with contact tracing or to go into quarantine. 

Now Covid-19 is no longer classified as “a critical threat to society”, or samhällsfarlig, the government can no longer order health checks at border posts, quarantine, or ban people from certain areas. 

The end of Sweden’s last remaining Covid-19 travel restrictions

Sweden’s last remaining travel restriction, the entry ban for non-EU arrivals, expired on March 31st.  This means that from April 1st, Sweden’s travel rules return to how they were before the Covid-19 pandemic began. 

No one will be required to show a vaccination or test certificate to enter the country, and no one will be barred from entering the country because their home country or departure country is not deemed to have a sufficiently good vaccination program or infection control measures. 

Does that mean the pandemic is over? 

Not as such. Infection rates are actually rising across Europe on the back of yet another version of the omicron variant. 

“There is still a pandemic going on and we all need to make sure that we live with it in a balanced way,” the Public Health Agency’s director-general, Karin Tegmark Wisell, told SVT. 

Her colleague Sara Byfors told TT that this included following the “fundamental recommendation to stay home if you are sick, so you don’t spread Covid-19 or any other diseases”. 

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