Germany partially closed its borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol on February 14 over a troubling surge in coronavirus mutations, earning a swift rebuke from the EU.

A thousand police officers were mobilised to ensure strict border checks, a reminder of the much-criticised early days of the pandemic when EU countries hastily closed their frontiers to each other.

At the Kiefersfelden crossing in southern Bavaria, masked officers in yellow high-visibility jackets were out in sub-zero temperatures, stopping each vehicle coming from Austria.

Under the new rules, only Germans or non-German residents are allowed through.

Exceptions are made for essential workers in sectors such as health and transport, as well as for urgent humanitarian reasons, the German interior ministry said. Everyone must be able to provide a recent negative coronavirus test.

Among those turned back was Austrian driver Irene, who said she would now have to make an hours-long detour.

She said: “I only wanted to drive through Germany to go to Vienna.

“This is a catastrophe, I have a dog in the car who is 15 years old . . . I don’t know the way and I don’t have GPS.”

Austrian interior minister Karl Nehammer said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that drivers were barred from using a shortcut through Germany to travel from one Austrian region to another.

Germany says the restrictions are aimed at slowing the spread of more contagious variants that first emerged in Britain and South Africa, and have created new virus hotspots along the Czech border and in Austria’s Tyrol region.

At the German-Czech border crossing in Bad Gottleuba, a police spokesman said the checks had caused waiting times of around one hour. Traffic is expected to be heavier from February 15, he added.

By February 14 afternoon, German police had checked more than 1,700 vehicles and denied entry to more than 500.

‘Enough’

The European Commission, eager to avoid a return to go-it-alone pandemic responses, condemned Germany’s border curbs.

“The fear of the coronavirus mutations is understandable,” EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides told Germany’s Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.

“But the truth is that the virus cannot be stopped by closed borders,” she said, adding that vaccines and following hygiene precautions were “the only things that work”.

“I think it’s wrong to return to a Europe with closed borders like we had in March 2020,” she added.

German interior minister Horst Seehofer rebuffed the criticism.

“That’s enough now,” he told the top-selling Bild daily. The EU “has made enough mistakes” with its sluggish vaccine rollout, he said. “The EU Commission should support us . . . instead of putting stones in our path.”

German health minister Jens Spahn said he backed a “border-free Europe”.

“But there are times in a pandemic when you must make these decisions for everyone’s safety and health,” he told the Sueddeutsche newspaper.

German rail company Deutsche Bahn has suspended services to and from the affected areas.

At Frankfurt airport, the country’s largest, federal police were checking passengers arriving from Vienna and Prague.