Everything was ready in the embassy for the visit of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock: Homemade cakes and cool drinks were on the tables, and the staff at the visa office and the "Task Force Evacuation Kabul" were also ready.
While parts of her delegation had already arrived at the embassy and were holding talks, Baerbock was still having lunch with Bhutto-Zardari in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, two kilometers away.
She had just planted a tree with the minister when the outside temperature was 40 degrees.
According to employees, she could not taste anything.
She knew immediately what that could mean.
Peter Carstens
Political correspondent in Berlin
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A rapid corona test was therefore carried out immediately, the second that day, because the minister had already tested herself after arriving after an eleven-hour journey.
The result corresponded to the first impression: positive.
Immediately all fellow travelers of their delegation were informed.
Some of them had been in close contact with Baerbock in the past few hours: on the government plane on the way from Berlin to Islamabad, at the meetings at the Hotel Serena and in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.
Others only saw them from afar.
Hectic consultations with the ambassador, the protocol followed by security officers who were traveling with him.
The journalists typed breaking news.
In the meantime, all other dates of the five-day trip had already been canceled, visits to Athens, Ankara and Istanbul.
"We can't tell you how things will continue logistically," it said.