Strasbourg (AFP)
Long lines of cars at the border: to everyone's surprise, since Thursday afternoon the German police have been carrying out reinforced checks in the face of the coronavirus crisis, asking French motorists entering German territory if they have a fever and if they are sick.
"Do you have a fever? Are you suffering?" Question police officers wearing fluorescent vests barred with the inscription "Polizei", in Kehl, the city facing Strasbourg on the other bank of the Rhine.
Wearing masks and protective gloves, the police are posted in a small white tent and question the motorists who have just crossed the Pont de l'Europe from Strasbourg. In the evening, German civil security installed spotlights and studs on the control area.
"From what I've heard, I think it's okay, I think it's good even if I don't know how you can control the virus with it," observes Manfred, a 79-year-old German came from Kehl on foot.
"It may not be enough to protect the whole country from the virus ..." he quipped, however, watching the scene with a sidelong smile.
For Thomas Calcutt, a 30-year-old Briton who works for a Kehl tour operator but lives in Strasbourg, these checks are "exaggerated".
"The question is: how is this going to influence my daily life? I already telecommute and it may last two to three weeks," he feared.
- Random fever checks -
"This measure was not taken in concert," regretted the prefect of the Grand Est region, Josiane Chevalier. "I was alerted by my own police, but the method is a bit surprising. The virus is circulating and does not know borders ...".
According to a German police officer interviewed by AFP, these checks are carried out along the border with France. They will continue "a certain time" and are valid for the whole of the Franco-German border, confirmed the police of Offenburg (southwest of Germany).
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) asked the federal police on Thursday to "significantly tighten controls at all borders," according to a spokesman for the ministry.
"In the Saarland, the Land authorities have asked the federal police to carry out random fever checks. It is therefore currently quite possible to meet federal police officers with thermometers at the border between the Saarland and France, "said the ministry.
"If a person has a high temperature and flu-like symptoms, they are arrested at the border and the rest of the procedure is discussed with the health authorities. Depending on the case, the persons concerned may be taken to a clinic for testing screening, "he said.
- "International risk zone" -
According to the German daily Bild, employees of the railway companies must also report suspected cases to the police.
More than 170,000 French cross-border workers leave their country every morning to go to work in Germany.
On Wednesday, the Robert-Koch Institute, which oversees research on epidemics and diseases in Germany, classified the Grand Est region, and therefore Alsace as a whole, as an "international risk zone", just like the Italy or the Chinese city of Wuhan, the world's epicenter of the epidemic.
In the process, the city of Kehl announced that it asked its employees residing in the Alsatian capital or in the Bas-Rhin "to stay at home", a recommendation also made to Kehlois working in France and to children attending a Strasbourg school.
For its part, the regional state of Baden-Württemberg recommended Monday to people living in the Haut-Rhin, in the south of Alsace, and "who regularly go to school or to work" in this Land, to stay "at home for 14 days at the moment". Several German companies have announced their intention to implement these recommendations.
© 2020 AFP