Amid the latest COVID-19 exclusion and a promising decline in new coronavirus infections, Germany is hesitant to ease restrictions due to the risk of a more contagious variant.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s 16 state governors on Tuesday decided to extend the country’s exclusion to two weeks by February 14 and tighten some measures, for example to require surgical masks – rather than just dust covers – in shops and public transport. .
On Thursday, the German Disease Control Center said 20,398 new cases had been reported in the past 24 hours, nearly 5,000 less than a week ago. The number of new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over seven days was 119, the lowest since the beginning of November – although still much higher than the level of 50 that the government is aiming for. There were another 1,013 deaths, bringing the total of Germany to 49,783 so far.
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The new variant, which has been detected in Germany and many other European countries, is not yet dominant, but ‘we must take the danger of this mutation very seriously’, Merkel told reporters.
“We need to slow down the spread of this mutation as much as possible, and that means … we should not wait until the danger here is more tangible,” she said. “Then it will be too late to prevent a third wave of the pandemic, and possibly an even heavier one than before. We can still prevent it.”
Merkel said Germany could not open everything at once if the closure ended, declaring that schools should open first.
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“We have to be very careful that we do not see what is happening in many countries: they are making a hard exclusion, they are opening up, they are opening up too much, and then they have the result that they are growing exponentially again very quickly, she said.
She pointed to Britain’s experience in December, when the new variant took off.