DAAD takes measures to address coronavirus

The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is responding to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in Germany by cancelling all major events until initially the end of April and limiting business travel or replacing it with digital formats. The measures are designed to protect scholarship holders, participating partners and employees, and to minimise disruption to funding activities.

Bonn, March 11, 2020 

The DAAD has decided to cancel all events with more than 50 attendees scheduled for March and April in Germany, and to keep business travel to a minimum. This will affect for example major scholarship holder and alumni meetings. “As the world’s largest funding organisation for international academic exchange, we are hoping this will help slow the spread of the new coronavirus”, said DAAD president Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, adding that protecting funding recipients, employees of partner organisations and DAAD staff was the primary focus of any measures taken by the organisation.

To ensure that its funding operations are maintained the DAAD is expanding its use of digital tools, especially for scholarship-related matters and in project funding, and increasingly employing video conferencing for assessments, selection meetings or in place of business trips. Large-scale events scheduled for the coming months will also make greater use of innovative digital formats such as webinars or virtual fairs.

Due to the coronavirus, the DAAD is restricting the travel activities that are indispensable to academic exchange: members of staff are not currently permitted to travel to countries containing high-risk areas as identified by the Robert Koch Institute or that require travellers from Germany to be quarantined. This restriction also applies to all DAAD funding recipients. The DAAD had already requested that scholarship holders in countries with high-risk areas leave those countries, or permitted them to do so if they wish. In general, the DAAD is recommending that anyone intending to travel contact the German embassy in their destination country beforehand in order to establish whether and what type of restrictions may apply to travellers from Germany.

The DAAD will continue to monitor the situation closely and adapt its measures as necessary.