Germany has too many loopholes in its coronavirus shutdown rules, the head of the country’s disease control agency said, as figures published on Thursday show the highest number of daily deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The Robert Koch Institute said 1,244 deaths from COVID-19 were confirmed in one day to Thursday, bringing the total to 43,881. There were also 25,164 newly established cases, bringing the total known infections of Germany to almost 2 million.
Lothar Wieler, president of the institute, said data indicate that people in Germany travel more than during the first phase of the pandemic in the spring, which contributes to the spread of the virus.
German authorities have restricted social contacts, mainly closed schools and restricted travel for those in areas with high infection rates, but the rules are not uniformly applied in the country’s 16 states.
“To me, these measures we are taking now are not a complete exclusion,” Wieler said. “There are still too many exceptions and they are not being strictly implemented.”
Officials are considering stricter restrictions to curb the continuing increase in infections.
The 7-day moving average daily new cases rose over the past two weeks from 23.36 per 100,000 people on December 30 to 26.03 per 100,000 people on January 13.
Wieler pointed to the sharp increase in infections recently seen in Ireland as an example of how quickly the outbreak could increase again if rules were relaxed, especially given the new seemingly more contagious variant of the virus that is there and in neighboring Britain circulate.
Wieler said all infections so far confirmed in Germany have been involving people who have traveled outside the country.
“We have to be very careful, especially for the British mutation of this virus,” Ralph Brinkhaus, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s bloc, told broadcaster n-tv. “We do not yet know what further measures will be needed in the coming weeks.”
To alleviate the strain on working families who have to look after school-going children and discourage them from using emergency care facilities, parliament on Thursday passed a bill doubling the amount of paid parental leave to 20 days by 2021. National Insurance pays parents up to 112.88 euros ($ 137) a day if they stay home to care for children under 12 who could not go to school due to the pandemic.
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