Contrary to all appeals from the travel industry, but also from the Robert Koch Institute, Germany introduced compulsory quarantine at the beginning of November. Austria is now following suit and government members Sebastian Kurz and Karl Nehammer, both ÖVP, justify this with discriminatory arguments without citing scientific evidence. The accusation of racism is at least not entirely unfounded, because people with families in the Balkans or in Turkey were presented in public as scapegoats.

Kurz had to admit to Armin Wolf live that the allegations that Nehammer and Kurz made in their government press conference, but also of the Federal Chancellor in an interview with ZIB 2, were not true. As a head of government, you can't really embarrass yourself any more, because the planned regulation is not only a slap in the face for people working in Austria who have families abroad, but also affects your own citizens who work abroad, but also the family lives in the home.

According to the current state of information, Kurz, Anschober, Nehammer and their allies only want to apply the "Anti-Christmas Ordinance" until January 10, 2021. If no new ideas follow, the negative PCR test will be sufficient again from January 11, 2021. If you come from countries without the highest travel warning levels, you don't even need that anymore. In other words: You are at risk until January 10th, 2021, and no longer as of January 11th, 2021. A logic that simply cannot be explained with common sense.

This is exactly how the disease protection authority of the European Union sees it, because it announced that, in the opinion of their scientists, all quarantine rules are completely superfluous. Intensive research by this renowned institution has shown that air passengers do not pose any additional risk to the pan-European pandemic. In view of the fact that the ECDC is not a filthy private basement laboratory, but an institution with a worldwide reputation, industry associations and airlines are now rightly questioning whether the measures taken by various governments with regard to entry and quarantine regulations are at all proportionate.

In order to give this view the right “flavor”, the ECDC and EASA issued an addendum to the “Aviation Health Protocol”. This has already been published and it can be read unmistakably and clearly that the quarantine regulations and other travel restrictions are not only no longer recommended, but ineffective. Incidentally, they did not say which “experts” Kurz, Nehammer and Anschober refer to in their decision, which could not deviate more blatantly from the recommendation of the ECDC. The existence of the opinion of the European epidemic protection authority was simply withheld from the population.

Air travelers are not scapegoats

The ECDC writes that "imported cases" currently only make up a very small, negligible proportion of the entire infection process and that in all of Europe. This statement is backed up with scientific research and hard facts. But that's not all: According to the ECDC, the frequency of Covid among travelers is demonstrably lower than in the total population in their home country. There are also significantly fewer contact persons. The epidemic protection agency also says that states should stop presenting passengers as "super spreaders" as this is not the case. According to the ECDC, almost all transmissions take place domestically in the private sector.

The European Disease Protection Authority also does not consider it necessary that travelers within the EU plus the United Kingdom have to be systematically tested for corona. Only people who show symptoms should not even be allowed to fly. The ECDC considers quarantine to be ineffective and recommends that it be abolished. Excluded from this are trips to areas with an extremely high risk of infection. Here it is recommended to keep a short quarantine and to carry out a test within this. The European epidemic protection authority does not believe in secretions lasting several weeks.