@JammyH - out of curiosity (and no so I can obsessively monitor Germany for an upcoming trip...
), what's your 'best' source of data for these numbers? Feels like everywhere I look is comparing slightly different statistics . To my simple mind, and assuming you have a halfway decent testing regime, you just need two numbers - number of cases per test, and rate of change of that number. Per-capita numbers might be useful too, I suppose.
Hi
@Hixee. I also have a germany trip planned for beginning of September, so I am keeping a close eye on things too.
From the extensive amount of research I’ve done, Grant Schnapps & Quash Quarantine decide the new countries based on two things:
1. 14 day cumulative Covid-19 prevalence per 100,000 population in a particular country.
2. Strictness of social distancing measures, testing volumes etc.
The first one is the most important of the two, and ultimately the deciding factor. When the 14 day cumulative rate per 100,000 goes above
20.0 for a particular country, the government actively start to consider adding it to the quarantine list. The best website to monitor these rates is the european centre for disease prevention and control:
This interactive dashboard provides a weekly integrated epidemiological summary for influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2.
www.ecdc.europa.eu
Notice the UK itself sits at an active rate of 18.6, which is dangerously close to 20.0, and covid prevalence in the UK is rising at the moment, so technically the government should be “working” to keep our rates under 20.0.
If you take a look at this table, it is updated daily, and is my best personal way of keeping informed. If the country you want to travel to hits a rate of above 20.0, you need to proceed with caution, and best to keep an eye on the media to see if it is potentially being added.
With that being said, out of all countries which are currently on the quarantine list, the one with the lowest rates is actually portugal, which sits at 26.0. So in my head it is very easy to consider this a baseline for when countries are in serious risk of being added.
The government seem to enjoy making a weekly thing of this now, so I am fully expecting another announcement on Thursday at 22:00. Looking at the table, Denmark and Croatia are at serious risk, both have rates of above 29 and both have extremely relaxed social distancing policies (croatia has mass gatherings and nightclubs open)- I would be genuinely surprised if both of these weren’t added come Thursday.
France and netherlands both sit at rates of over 40, hence their addition and Belgium over 60, and Spain over 115, so I hope this gives an insight as to why they’ve been added.
Other countries which I consider in the “risk zone” are Poland (25.7), Austria (22.4), Greece (21.2), Iceland (29.7). Out of these four, in my opinion, Greece will be the first to be added, simply because social distancing is the most relaxed. Austria is very strict with social distancing and masks and Iceland has a very meticulous testing regime meaning they can virtually pick up all cases, so I don’t expect either of these air bridges to be immediately severed.
Now the ECDC website doesn’t take into account testing and strictness of social distancing measures. You will struggle to find a website which looks specifically at each countries “positive rate” between amount of tests performed and positive cases detected. So this is very hard to keep a close eye on. But it is normally detailed in each governments database- as
@SimonProD has said, if you are specifically interested in germany, the Robert Koch institution is a good place to gather your information.
According to the ECDC, Germany sits at a rate of 16.3, compared to uk which sits at 18.6, as long as it stays below the uk I would say we should be fine getting back, but UK’s rate also has to remain low so we can get into Germany without a quarantine.
Another good place which updates data daily is:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
This will give you the new daily cases per country, the new daily deaths, the amount of patients recovered and critical and you can also see the amount of tests performed per capita by each country throughout the pandemic (but this leads to slightly skewed data as UK is viewed now to be one of the best countries for testing- yet we didn’t have tests available to the public until June and just have ramped it up since then, whereas countries like Germany have been consistent with testing throughout).
Here are 2 graphs I’ve taken from world-o-meter. It shows both the UK and germany have seen rising cases since easing lockdown and reopening borders, although both are steady rises and neither are exponential. You also need to remember that germany has a pop of 83 mil compared to UK’s 66 mil.