Although the Spanish Mediterranean island of Mallorca has been falling below Germany's relevant seven-day incidence value of 50 per 100.000 inhabitants for several weeks, the government is sticking to the risk area classification. Tour operators are angry about this and suspect that they want to make traveling to Mallorca more difficult.
Germany has been in a kind of permanent lockdown for a long time, although there is currently no end in sight. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) repeatedly cites Easter as a brand, but a look back at the previous year shows that another extension could possibly flourish under the pretext of Easter celebrations.
The Balearic Islands are much better off than Germany when it comes to new infections with the corona virus. According to official figures from the regional health ministry, the seven-day incidence on Friday was as follows: Menorca 3,2, Ibiza 24,3, Mallorca 26,6 and all islands combined 24,8. This means that the Balearic Islands themselves fall below Angela Merkel's declared value of 35 new infections per 100.000 inhabitants in seven days.
Incidence even below Merkel value of 35
According to the rigid classification of the Robert Koch Institute, the Balearic Islands should have long since lost the "risk area" mark. The German authorities are not thinking about that at the moment and are sticking to the travel warning for the three islands. The German Foreign Ministry justified the behavior towards the Mallorca-Zeitung as follows: “The federal government is continuously reviewing the classification as risk areas, the list is updated weekly. Please understand that we cannot anticipate the ongoing voting at this point ”.
The spokesman told a spokesman for the medium: "Protective measures are taken if the respective country or individual regions exceed the number of newly infected in relation to the population of 50 cases per 100.000 cumulative in the last seven days. Conversely, these measures can also be lifted if the seven-day incidence in the respective country or individual regions stabilizes again below this value ”. According to Mallorca Zeitung, this should describe the situation in the Balearic Islands well. The seven-day incidence has been below 17 per 2021 population since February 50, 100.000.
Nevertheless, the Federal Republic of Germany continues to regard Spain as a risk region and is sticking to the travel warning - also for the Balearic Islands. This annoys tour operators too. For example, DER Touristik demands in a media release: "Due to the good pandemic development, we expect the travel destination to open soon".