Germany dismisses the Dominican Republic as a COVID-19 risk area
Germany does not consider the Dominican Republic as a risky destination area for COVID-19 infection.
The announcement comes from the Robert Kock Institute (RKI, in English), in a list that also includes Saint Lucia, Antigua, and Barbuda, the South Karelia, and Kymenlaakso regions of Finland, the West region of Ireland, and the county of Vestfold og Telemark from Norway.
The institute clarified that this list can be modified or expanded on short notice, as the government examines the places that should be classified as risk areas.
The classification as a risk area is given after analysis and decision-making of different German institutions.
It is based on a two-step assessment: initially, it is determined in which countries or regions there were more than 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days.
In a second step, qualitative and other criteria are used to determine whether countries or regions that could fall below this threshold could nevertheless present an increased risk of infection.
The same applies to countries or regions that could fall above this threshold but do not pose a higher risk.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) indicated that contagion and fire figures are stable in Germany, but still very high.
The weekly incidence rose again slightly to 164 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, while the death toll has not decreased since the end of last month, with an average of a thousand deaths per week.
About 15% of German tourists who enter the Dominican Republic do so through Samaná as their final destination, as reported by the Dominican Ministry of Tourism.
“With these new measures it is a firm step towards the recovery of jobs and the continuous reactivation of the industry of such an important tourist pole”, said the institution of the Caribbean country.
He also said that Germany has a vaccination process accelerated by 16%, being the country in Europe with the lowest level of unemployment and with the best prospect of economic recovery by 2022.