Germany will impose the mandatory vaccination on professionals from “sensitive” sectors, such as medical personnel or in contact with vulnerable people, and will generalize specific restrictions for unvaccinated people, such as excluding them from certain public places, to combat a new outbreak of infections by COVID-19, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Thursday (11.18.2021) after a crisis meeting.
“We need to quickly put a stop to the exponential increase” in new infections and bed occupancy in intensive care units, said Merkel, who announced a comprehensive package of measures with her likely successor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, after meeting with leaders. regional and in response to the alarm by the successive records of incidence, which today rose to 336.9 infections in seven days per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany. “We are in a very serious situation,” Merkel summed up. “Many of the measures that are now necessary would not be if there were more people vaccinated,” lamented the chancellor. “And it is not too late to get vaccinated now,” he recommended.
“We are in a somewhat unusual situation. But it does not matter whether it is the government in office or the one that is being formed. We have to act quickly,” admitted the Chancellor, who will leave office with the inauguration of the Social Democrat Scholz, scheduled for the week of 6th of December. The lower house of the German Parliament approved precisely today, with the votes of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, the new legal framework drawn up by this still virtual coalition to combat the pandemic and whose ratification tomorrow in the upper house the conservatives threaten to block.
The so-called “2G” rule, which allows only the vaccinated (“geimpfte”) and the cured (“genesene”) to access public places such as restaurants or concert halls, will be applied when the hospitalization threshold exceeds three covid patients for every 100,000 inhabitants, he indicated, which is already happening in most regions of the country. The seven-day admission rate is 5.15 per 100,000 inhabitants and that of citizens with the complete vaccination schedule is 67.7%, one of the lowest levels in Western Europe.
lgc (afp/efe/reuters)
