Bavaria calls for mandatory COVID-19 tests at German airports

Bavaria's Minister-President Markus Soeder on Monday called for mandatory and free of charge COVID-19 tests at German airports, reported Xinhua.

The southern German state Bavaria would also set up voluntary COVID-19 test facilities at several motorway border crossings as well as at the main railway stations in Munich and Nuremberg, according to Soeder.

Soeder said he was "very worried" about travelers returning from holidays. The summer holidays in Bavaria are just beginning this week.

On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) warned that the number of new daily COVID-19 cases in Germany was "significantly higher than in the previous weeks."

Many scattered COVID-19 outbreaks had been recorded across Germany after family celebrations as well as among employees at meat processing plants. In addition, COVID-19 cases were "increasingly identified among people returning from traveling," according to the RKI.

Returnees from holidays abroad could make a voluntarily COVID-19 test at several airports in Germany, after Minister of Health Jens Spahn and the health ministers of Germany's states agreed on Friday that all travelers from risk areas could get a coronavirus test free of charge upon their return to the country.

A "legal obligation" for COVID-19 tests for returnees from risk areas would be also reviewed, Spahn told the German radio station Deutschlandfunk on Saturday.

Spahn said that Germany recorded many small outbreaks but the question now was "whether this would become a wave." In order to "quickly" identify infection chains, "extensive testing" was required.