Berlin and Covid

Just sent you a private message with info on a friend of mine living in Berlin.

I am not traveling now, but I think the greatest risk is the transit period in and out of Germany. If you really need to go to the conference, I would not hesitate to spend extra time in Berlin for tourist purposes unless it would be a disaster to get infected there (as opposed to at home) and test positive.

Germany has given 10% more vaccinations than we have so far and is still administering more doses per day (about 25% more), so that gap will probably continue to expand.

Germany has a current infection rate that is less than 1/5 ours. It has been one of the most successful countries at managing the pandemic.

I've read (on a non-travel-forum with some participants from Europe) that the German states have considerable autonomy and can have different mitigation policies. I have no information about Berlin specifically, including the infection level there as opposed to the country's average. The link I've posted below only shows country averages. I'd suggest visiting the websites of a few museums and other attractions in Berlin to see what you can learn about current policies.

You can explore several categories of COVID-related data here:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=totalvaccinationsperhundred&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=ALB~AND~AUT~BLR~BEL~BIH~BGR~HRV~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~HUN~ISL~IRL~ITA~OWIDKOS~LVA~LIE~LTU~LUX~MLT~MDA~MCO~MNE~NLD~MKD~NOR~POL~PRT~ROU~RUS~SMR~SRB~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~UKR~GBR~VAT~USA~CAN

I can understand your reluctance. I feel similarly.

My daughter-in-law is a consultant for a major U.S. consulting company. She is also 5 months pregnant. She is vaccinated and has been traveling within the U.S. to clients. I told her we were considering travel to Poland in a couple weeks. We also discussed Germany a bit since they share a border. She stays on top of COVID information for a number of reasons. She feels she has to travel for work and her opinion is that she'd MUCH rather travel to Germany and Poland than places she's been traveling to in the U.S. I think that piece is really important. If the U.S. state department were to assign a risk level to the U.S., we'd be a 4.

I agree with Acraven in that the biggest COVID risk is the travel to get to Germany. I also think that since you'd already be there, you may as well extend your stay for free time. Since you are traveling for work, I'm guessing you at the very least would be able to get a seat on the plane that would give you more space and isolate you a bit. I like window seats as far forward in the plane as possible.

I agree with what the others have said. The transit is the biggest risk. I am assuming you are or will be vaccinated before travel (under current rules, you would have to quarantine if you are not). For vaccinated people who are willing to mask up in public, things are fairly safe in most places. Sure, breakthroughs are possible, but like elsewhere, our big numbers (still far below those in the US) appear to be the unvaccinated.

Other things that might help:

Masks are prevalent and required here--surgical or FFP2 (no cloth) and easy to get at stores.
Testing is easily accessed here--both for your own piece of mind and for your return flight. Self test kits are inexpensive and prevalent.
The healthcare here is great on the off chance that you do get sick, and unlike much of the US, the hospitals are not currently overwhelmed.

I just want to thank everyone who replied to my question. I really appreciate you taking the time to do so. While I am still trying to decide what to do, your input is most valuable.
Sincerely,
Joan