Foreign workers arrive to pick German harvest

Two planeloads of Eastern European farmhands arrived on Thursday in Berlin and Duesseldorf amid strict precautions to protect the country from the new coronavirus as an ambitious German program to import seasonal workers to help work the fields got underway.

Seasonal workers had been caught up in the country's ban on travel after the outbreak of the coronavirus, leaving a massive deficit in personnel available to pick asparagus, which has already sprouted, and plant other crops in German fields, which employed some 300,000 such workers last year.

Most of those workers came from Eastern European countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Hungary, where wages are much lower than Germany, Europe's largest economy.

Under the new program, workers need to fly in to the country in controlled groups to prevent the possible infection of others en route and are subject to medical checks upon arrival. They then have to live and work separately from other farmhands for two weeks, and wear protective gear.

Ahead of time, interested workers have to register online and have their information checked by federal police. Farmers needing help register online with Eurowings, the airline contracted to bring the workers in, saying when they're needed and where.

So far, 9,900 people had registered for April and another 4,300 for May.

Flights are then organized to bring in groups, and the first group of workers, 530 people from Romania, arrived on Thursday in Duesseldorf and Berlin, Eurowings said. Further flights were already planned to Duesseldorf, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Nuremberg and Frankfurt.

The global pandemic that has sickened at least 1,490,790 people, killed more than 88,000 worldwide, crippled economies and forced restrictions on the movement of millions of people in an effort to stop the virus from spreading further and overwhelming health care systems.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.