LIVE | German IC doctors: set hard lockdown of two weeks | Inland

Read the latest news about the corona crisis below:

A hard two-week lockdown is the only way to avoid flooding German hospitals as the country grapples with a third wave of corona infections. The German Association of Intensive Care Physicians makes this appeal to Angela Merkel’s federal government.

“A mix of a hard lockdown, vaccinations and tests is needed to prevent intensive care units from being overrun,” said Christian Karagiannidis, head of the German Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, to the Rheinischen Post.

Karagiannidis called on the government to immediately halt all planned easing, such as the opening of non-essential shops and entertainment venues, in light of the rapidly increasing numbers of cases. “I ask politicians not to abandon hospital staff,” he added.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German counterpart of the RIVM, reported the highest seven-day infection rate per 100,000 inhabitants since mid-January: 124.9 on Saturday. A day earlier that was 119.1.

Confusion over the German government’s strategy to contain the coronavirus has led to disagreements among leaders of the 16 states. Some refuse to agree to a plan to close areas where infection rates remain relatively low.

For example, the state of Saarland plans to end the lockdown after Easter. Cinemas, sports centers and restaurants with outdoor space may open their doors again, says the prime minister of the small region of about one million inhabitants.

09.00 – Facebook blocks Maduro’s page for corona disinformation

Facebook has blocked the official page of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro because it would spread disinformation about the corona virus. According to a Facebook spokesperson, a treatment method was promoted on the page, without proof that this method can fight the virus.

In January Maduro described a medicine derived from thyme as a “panacea” that would neutralize the coronavirus without side effects. However, according to doctors, this claim is not endorsed by science.

Facebook has also taken a video offline in which Maduro is promoting the drug, as it goes against the social media platform’s policies that say no false claims should be made about anything that is guaranteed to prevent or cure Covid-19. “We follow the guidelines of the World Health Organization that state that there is currently no cure for the virus,” a spokesman told Reuters news agency.

08.00 – ‘Brussels and London approach each other in vaccine dispute’

The European Union and Great Britain are on the cusp of an agreement to prevent EU countries from blocking the export of corona vaccines to Great Britain, British newspaper The Times reports Saturday. The deal was to be made this weekend.

The agreement means that the EU can no longer threaten to ban the export of vaccines from manufacturer Pfizer / BioNTech to Great Britain. In exchange for that promise, Great Britain is renouncing an ordered delivery of AstraZeneca vaccines to be exported from the Netherlands in the long term.

The slow delivery of corona vaccines to the EU is increasingly leading to conflict between London and Brussels. Central to the most recent row about the vaccinations is a pharmaceutical factory in the Netherlands that, according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is supposed to make AstraZeneca vaccines for the British. That is disputed on the continent. The factory of the company Halix in Leiden was officially approved by the European Medicines Agency EMA on Friday.

The EU, for its part, believes that Britain should deliver more, among other things to help compensate for the delayed deliveries from manufacturer AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca has been supplying far fewer vaccines to the EU than agreed for months.

07.00 – Number of new corona infections in Germany decreases slightly again

The number of new corona cases in Germany is again slightly lower than the day before. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German counterpart of the RIVM, registered 20,472 new corona infections on Saturday morning.

A day earlier, 21,573 new cases were reported, up from about 22,657 on Thursday.

In total, the coronavirus has been diagnosed in 2,755,225 residents of Germany since the start of the pandemic. In the past 24 hours, another 157 people died from the effects of Covid-19. The corona virus has now claimed at least 75,780 lives in Germany.

In Germany, the lockdown will in any case run until April 18. The decision to limit the number of social contacts around Easter with measures was withdrawn by Merkel on Wednesday after a storm of criticism. She apologized publicly.

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