Germany is also extending lockdown until the beginning of March | Abroad

Chancellor Merkel was unable to align the sixteen states. That is also difficult, because they are all responsible for the education themselves, and can ignore the guidelines from Berlin. Merkel, who is leaving this autumn, also wanted all schools to reopen at the same time, but that turned out not to be feasible.

Schools

As a PhD physicist, Merkel wants the lockdown to last as long as possible, at least until mid-March. Cross-border states such as Saxony, East Germany, but also Schleswig-Holstein and densely populated North Rhine-Westphalia want to open schools as soon as possible, so that students do not fall behind too much or tensions at home become too great.

The lockdown itself will be extended until at least March 7th. As a shower, Merkel agreed with the sixteen prime ministers that the citizens may be cut again from the beginning of March. At first they wanted to end the lockdown as having fifty inhabitants per hundred thousand corona.

In the meantime, this threshold has dropped to 35, and for full opening, twenty and ten sick per hundred thousand respectively are the benchmark. Initially, only one customer is allowed to purchase within twenty square meters. Currently, Germany has 75 infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants, while our country has 140. Germany therefore has almost twice as many Covid 19 patients as the Netherlands.

Disgust

In Germany there is a lot of aversion to the Berlin rules. The catering industry is fiercely against a ‘permanent lockdown’, the farmers demonstrate every day with tractors for the ministries and companies and the self-employed complain bitterly that the financial aid from November and December has not yet arrived.

Another dispute arose over teachers and nursery staff. Some politicians were of the opinion that this social group should be pinned earlier than others.

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