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Alarmed by rising covid-19 rates, Denmark and 10 other European countries have said visitors from Luxembourg are not welcome. Separately, Norway will quarantine Luxembourg travellers and Belgium issued a warning about travel to the grand duchy. Photo: Markus Winkler/Unsplash 

As of 9 July, the latest figures published, there were 581 active infections in the grand duchy, the highest number recorded since 25 April.

Last week Denmark banned entry to Luxembourg residents (along with those of Portugal and most of Sweden).

Jean Asselborn, the grand duchy’s foreign minister (LSAP), said on Friday that ten other European countries restricted travel of Luxembourg residents in some form or another.

Responding to a parliamentary question from the MPs Mars Di Bartolomeo and Yves Cruchten (both LSAP), Asselborn stated:

“According to epidemiological criteria and models which vary from country to country, various restrictive measures, which can range from the ban on entry for non-essential journeys to quarantine and self-isolation through the obligation to present a negative test certificate, have been implemented by Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ireland, Slovenia, Romania, Finland, Slovakia and Cyprus. Norway has just announced a quarantine measure. 

 

“However, from today, travelers from Luxembourg are exempt from the mandatory 14-day quarantine in the United Kingdom.”

Belgium placed Luxembourg on its “orange” list on Sunday. That means Belgians returning from Luxembourg should “exercise increased vigilance”.

On Friday, Paulette Lenert, Luxembourg’s health minister (LSAP), acknowledged the upward trend, but said the grand duchy was building an accurate picture of the situation based on the country’s high level of testing.

On Sunday, it was announced that there had been one further death from covid-19, the first fatality since 23 May. A total of 111 people have now died as a result of contracting the virus in the grand duchy.

Asselborn said that, according to the European Center for Disease Control, “Luxembourg performs an average of 9,582 tests [per] 100,000 inhabitants over a period of 7 days, which is by far the largest number of tests in the Schengen area.”

Earlier figures analysed by Our World in Data, a publication based at the University of Oxford, and by an American academic, suggest a strong link between the number of tests that a country conducts and its reported infection rate.