Belgium and Germany put the provinces of North and South Holland on red. In Germany, the measure will take effect immediately and with retroactive effect.
This means that non-essential travel to the two provinces is prohibited and anyone who has been in North or South Holland in the past two weeks is required to take a corona test upon return. It then differs per state whether people should also be quarantined.
Quarantined for two weeks
In Belgium, the rule takes effect on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. Non-essential travel to the two provinces is prohibited from then on. Belgians who have been in one of these provinces for more than 48 hours are required to undergo a test upon their return and are required to be quarantined for two weeks.
Code orange applies in Belgium for the provinces of Noord-Brabant, Flevoland, Utrecht, Limburg, Gelderland and Groningen. Returning Belgians from those provinces are advised by the Belgian government to have themselves tested and to be quarantined, but this is not mandatory.
It is the first time that Belgium has put Dutch provinces on the red. However, on March 18, when the system with the color codes did not yet exist, Belgium closed the border with the Netherlands for non-essential journeys. For frontier workers in vital sectors, a special vignette introduced to speed up crossing the border.
“Trucks drive by”
Bart van Pagée of Transport and Logistics Netherlands does not expect that the measures taken by Belgium and Germany will cause many problems in the transport sector. “Other countries or areas in Europe have also been red, such as Spain and Croatia, but the trucks could continue to drive there.”
At the beginning of the corona outbreak, many countries were locked and traffic jams developed at the borders. There were also problems with the drivers’ resting places, which were closed by many countries. “That has now been arranged much better at European level, so we do not foresee any problems.”
–
