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Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - Despite the ongoing corona pandemic, the North Rhine-Westphalian state government wants to continue to adhere to open borders with its neighboring countries, the Netherlands and Belgium.
"It would be fatal if everyone withdrew into national snail shells during the crisis," warned NRW European Minister Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner (CDU).
"Mutual trust is a valuable asset for us: information as a means against isolation."
In other countries, closed borders have sometimes had "catastrophic consequences" and revived old prejudices, he told the German Press Agency in Düsseldorf.
NRW has taken a different path since the outbreak of the pandemic and instead relied on close cooperation.
The constant exchange in the cross-border working group “Cross-Border Taskforce Corona” made it possible to “keep the borders with the Dutch and Belgian neighbors open even in difficult times”, emphasized the CDU politician.
"If the extremely contagious mutations create new high-risk areas, then we have to rethink."
Holthoff-Pförtner drew a positive balance of the unit, which had been working for almost a year, into which, after officials from North Rhine-Westphalia, Belgium and the Netherlands, coordinators from Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate were later integrated.
The range of the "Corona Task Force" now extends across the entire border area that Germany shares with the Netherlands and Belgium.
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The working group usually acts as an intermediary - for example between the health ministries in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Netherlands, which had made it possible for Dutch patients to be admitted to intensive care units in North Rhine-Westphalia.
According to the European Ministry, NRW has so far admitted 49 intensive care patients from the neighboring country.
Another twelve patients received medical care in other federal states.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210212-99-407522 / 2