If you want to travel, you have to be considerate

Carola Felchner is a freelance writer in the medical department and a certified training and nutrition advisor. She worked for various specialist magazines and online portals before becoming a freelance journalist in 2015. Before starting her internship, she studied translation and interpreting in Kempten and Munich.

More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.

Little by little, the hotels, holiday apartments and campsites are allowed to receive tourists again. A lifting of the travel warning is up for debate. So the Whitsun and summer vacation could take place - but it is not entirely risk-free.

Pentecost is just around the corner, the summer holidays are approaching. Restaurants are allowed to reopen in Germany, and under certain conditions in some places also pubs and bars. With a view to the holiday season, many people hope for the greatest possible normalcy. But the situation could turn around again, warn experts.

The infection numbers are currently looking good. If many people meet who normally have no contact with each other, however, another exponential growth in the number of infections is to be feared, says the doctor and health researcher Max Geraedts from the University of Marburg of the German press agency dpa.

Traveling carries risks

The German tourism industry is also benefiting from the relaxation of the Corona measures: Hotels and holiday apartments are allowed to receive guests again - depending on the federal state, subject to appropriate conditions and at different times. The worldwide travel warning could possibly be lifted after June 14, at least for the European Union.

But travel carries risks with regard to the number of infections. "If you walk around on the beach alone - no matter where in the world - then of course it doesn't matter, you can do that," says Geraedts. "But when you get together with a lot of people in a bar in the evening, it can get uncomfortable."

Conditions abroad are different

Anyone who decides to travel abroad must also be aware that in an emergency they may not be able to count on the same medical care as in Germany, explains the researcher.

In such countries, as a traveler, you can also endanger the local population if they already have problems receiving adequate medical care: "If foreigners in need of treatment come along, that's of course bad," says Geraedts.

"At least ethically, it is questionable at least once if the few resources that are already there are used up with adventurous travelers." Geraedts recalls the possibility that an infected person can still feel completely healthy when they start their journey and still be contagious: "The risk that you take the virus with you when you travel is always there."

Further spread of the virus through travel

The upcoming vacation season also carries the risk that the virus will spread more widely, explains Geraedts - also in places that have so far been relatively spared. At the beginning of the year, many outbreaks could still be clearly localized in individual locations, for example in the ski resort of Ischgl.

"This is of course a real problem, because now we have all these individual cases that are spread all over Germany," he says. "If they all go on vacation in Germany, in Europe and around the world, there is of course the risk that they will carry the virus everywhere."

Unsure, but not too worried?

Hajo Zeeb from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in Bremen also emphasizes with a view to infected people who show no or few symptoms of the disease: "If you illustrate that only a very small proportion of the population has so far been immune, it is clear that this is Virus can spread again quickly if the conditions are right. "

At the same time, Zeeb points out that many people now wear masks and have got used to physical distancing. And: The number of infections is currently falling not only in Germany, but also in travel countries in the Mediterranean region. "So my fears are not too great, but there are some uncertainties." (caf / dpa)

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