Germany is to ban travel across some of its borders, after the interior ministry said Austria’s Tyrol region and the Czech Republic were now classed as coronavirus “mutation areas”.
Austrian police and soldiers were deployed in Tyrol on Friday to restrict travel outside the region.
The Czech Republic has also banned movement in and out of three regions.
In a blow to the government, Czech MPs refused to extend a state of emergency, even though infections have not fallen.
The German border restrictions with Tyrol and the Czech Republic will come into force on Sunday. “They are unavoidable for a certain period of time to prevent the spread of dangerous virus variants,” Health Minister Jens Spahn announced. A travel ban will also come into effect with Slovakia.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said the German government had been asked to impose temporary restrictions by the states of Saxony in the east and Bavaria in the south-west. Checkpoints will be put in place and trade links will be allowed to continue. Further exemptions will be announced later, which are seen as vital for commuters.
Germany imposed border controls for three months at the start of the pandemic in an attempt to halt the spread, but it affected cross-border workers and families as well as trade.
The infection rate has come down in Germany in recent weeks and the head of the RKI public health institute, Lothar Wieler, said on Friday that the “corona measures are working”, adding that they had also helped prevent the usual wave of winter flu.
A national lockdown has been extended until 7 March, but schools in some states will reopen this month and hairdressers can start work again on 1 March.