Germany will increase checks on travellers in border areas. The authorities want to check more intensively whether people coming to Germany have a negative corona test, said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, according to German media.

“No matter where you come from, be it Poland, France or Denmark, everyone should expect a check,” the minister warned. He has already asked the national police to check more and, according to German media, also wants to appeal to police forces from federal states.

Seehofer also announced that the structural checks at the Czech Republic border would be extended by two weeks. He said infection rates in Czech areas near the German border are still too high to ease measures.

Similar measures at the border with the Austrian region of Tyrol will be ended, Seehofer confirmed. Germany had border traffic there severely restricted earlier this year due to an outbreak of the South African corona variant.

The planned lifting of these border measures has already generated positive reactions in Austria. The regional administrator Günther Platter already said last week that it had finally succeeded in convincing the Germans that the controls should be stopped. He called the situation at the border “extremely stressful”.