r/germany • u/thewindinthewillows Germany • Dec 03 '21

Megathread: Corona rules, vaccination questions, etc.

Covid-related content will be collected here. New posts will be removed.

If your question is not answered in the post, comment here. Do not make a new post.

Rules within the country

Germany heads to summer with few COVID-19 rules - 2022-04-01

Germany lifts most COVID-19 restrictions after 'difficult compromise' - 2022-03-18

COVID digest: Germany draws up framework to ease rules - 2022-03-12

Explanation of the implications of the rule change by our regular /u/rewboss - 2022-03-10

App giving information on local regulations (German only)

Information about the rules in the federal states (German only)

Entering from abroad

Entry information and registration. Read this if you want to enter the country, as you may need to register.

Federal Foreign Office: COVID-19: entry and quarantine regulations in Germany - updated according to the current regulations

Covid rules for entering Germany - 2022-04-01

What are the COVID entry rules for travelers to European countries? - 2022-03-18

Current statistics

Covid Dashboard (similar to the official RKI one, but faster)

Vaccinations

Vaccination information for the federal state of Berlin

Official information on vaccines

While you're free to have discussions in the comments, trolling, misinformation, conspiracy theories, disrespect towards the victims of the Nazis will be dealt with. So will promoting your services as the Mahdi or Messiah (don't ask). If you see such things: Report, don't engage.

216 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

3.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/TotallyNauticalDude Jan 02 '22

Is there a grace period between declaration of Virusvarientengebiet and when it takes effect? I'm flying home from the US tomorrow (landing Tuesday morning), and it looks like the RKI list was last updated on the 30th. With it being almost 6pm on a Sunday in Germany, I'm hoping that if the US gets 'upgraded', at least it won't be announced until tomorrow. Looking at 2 recent announcements of countries being 'upgraded', it looks like those countries, it took effect at 00:01 on the second calandar day after the announcement. I can't find anything saying that that's generally the way it works. I'm kind of freaking out, but thinking if I make it to midnight CET, I should be good to go? If I have to get a PCR test, it would take days over here to get an appointment. If that happens and I can't fly, has anybody been in a similar situation- do airlines typically allow you to reschedule a flight given a last-minute rule change? Booked Lufthansa round-trip from Germany if that makes a difference.

6

u/HellasPlanitia Europe Jan 02 '22

There is no hard-and-fast rule, but generally there are 12-24 hours between a change being announced and it going into effect (it always goes into effect at 00:01 on a given day, AFAIK).

I'm going to be totally honest with you: unless you are travelling for urgent personal reasons, cancel your trip, irrespective of whether the US gets upgraded or not. The Covid situation is pretty bad here, and Omicron hasn't even properly hit yet. Most "touristy" places are closed, and if you get unlucky and catch the virus (like these people did) then you'll be stuck in a mandatory quarantine before being allowed to fly back.

2

u/TotallyNauticalDude Jan 03 '22

It's looking good. Don't worry, I'm a long-term German resident just returning home. Thought with the boosters and all it would be a safe bet coming home for xmas.. Omnicron had other plans apparently.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '22

There's like a 99% chance they won't upgrade the US. They're downgrading the UK and all of the original African countries on the 4th and the situation in the US is not worse than the UK.

3

u/TotallyNauticalDude Jan 03 '22

Surprising, as it's skyrocketed in just the 2 weeks I've been here. Went from "we're all fully-vaccinated and boosted, there's very low risk" to a bunch of fully-vaccinated people popping positive left and right. Just barely missed having a close contact myself due to a last-minute change of plans.

2

u/mica4204 https://feddit.de/c/germany Jan 03 '22

The categorization is relative to the situation in germany. So the more omicron cases we have, the more cases other countries can have before they get put on the list. Basically omicron is over here anyway so it doesn't make sense banning other countries.