In Germany, given the skyrocketing corona numbers, calls are getting louder to drastically restrict public life before Christmas. “It is clear that the retail trade must be closed now. We must limit the contacts to the maximum,” said the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), in the morning on Deutschlandfunk. The politician is not alone in this. “We need this nationwide, as hard as possible lockdown including school closings in the coming week,” said SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach of the “Rheinische Post”. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) had previously called for further measures on ZDF to prevent a new exponential increase in the number of infections.
However, the federal and state governments have not yet been able to agree on a common path. It is also not yet clear when Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) will coordinate with the Prime Ministers. In the Deutschlandfunk interview, Schwesig asked for understanding that one had to first come to an agreement on this situation. There are also different assessments among virologists. And Schwesig underlined: “There are no brakes.”
Maximum values in the RKI balance sheet
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported both new highs in the number of new infections and the number of corona deaths on Friday: 29,875 people were then registered as newly infected within 24 hours – that’s a good 6,000 more than on the Friday before one Week. Overall, the number of infections in Germany is 1,272,078.
The number of positive corona findings continues to rise
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The number of people who died from or with the coronavirus also reached a new high of 598 within one day. There have been a total of 20,970 registered deaths in connection with the virus in Germany to date. The seven-day incidence also skyrocketed. The RKI now gives it 156.3. The value says how many people are mathematically infected within seven days for every 100,000 inhabitants. The aim of the federal and state governments is actually a value of 50 so that health authorities can track infection chains again.
Lockdown – only when?
A tougher lockdown with business closings after the holidays until January 10 is now considered largely undisputed between the federal and state governments in view of the development of the number of infections.
The Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer pleaded for a coordinated federal-state approach to new closings, for example in retail. “This is necessary because otherwise we would experience corona tourism between countries with and without lockdown, which would be counterproductive,” said the SPD politician of the “Rheinische Post”. It is important to have one
to agree a common line for all of Germany.
However, the head of the German Medical Association, Klaus Reinhardt, warned against excessive expectations of a harder lockdown. “It is an illusion to believe that with a hard lockdown of 14 days from Christmas we can get the pandemic under control,” he told the editorial network Germany (RND). After the end of a lockdown, the number of infections would rise again with the easing.
ml / mak (rtr, dpa, RKI, DLF)
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