From Tuesday, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia will tighten the mask and test requirement in the leisure area – among other things for Sports indoors. “Because of the significantly higher aggressiveness of the Omikron variant, the exceptions to the mask requirement are reduced”, shared that NRW– Ministry of Health on Thursday.
Since masks cannot usually be worn for indoor sports (training and competitions), swimming pools and wellness facilities (saunas, thermal baths, tanning salons and similar facilities), immunized persons would in future also have to have a current, negative rapid test evidence that is no older than 24 hours is to take with you (2G Plus). These rules do not apply to use by schools, as the rules of the Corona Care Ordinance are applied there.
No additional test required for outdoor sports
An additional test is not necessary for joint exercise in the open air in sports facilities, but those who do sports must be immunized.
As previously agreed by the federal and state governments, there are no longer any spectators in the upper, supra-regional sports leagues. A maximum of 750 spectators applies to all other events, whereby the 2G rule applies there. The updated NRW Corona Protection Ordinance applies from December 28th to January 12th.
Hamburg, Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein announced somewhat surprisingly on Thursday that they did not want to implement the federal-state decision for ghost games in the professional leagues – viewers are still allowed there, albeit with restrictions.