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Health Minister Spahn defends tough measures
© WHAT (dpa)
The federal and state governments want to control the number of dramatically increasing corona infections with massive contact restrictions during November. Across Germany, the measures will enter into force on November 2 and not on November 4, as originally planned in the federal resolution. The German press agency found out on Wednesday from video discussions between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the prime ministers of the federal states.
After two weeks, around November 11, the Chancellor and the heads of government want to discuss again, evaluate the objectives achieved through the measures and make the necessary adjustments.
Subsequently, specific contact restrictions must be discussed and decided in the federal-state circuit. The goal is to curb the growing number of infections by Christmas. According to a federal government draft resolution, leisure facilities and restaurants throughout Germany will be closed, entertainment events will be banned, and public contacts and celebrations in squares and apartments will be restricted.
In country circles it was said that consensus had already been reached on many points of the internal preliminary debate. At first it was not clear what points were involved.
With tough cuts for citizens and many businesses, the German federal government wants to control the increasing number of corona infections. People should reduce their private contacts to an “absolutely necessary minimum,” according to a federal resolution for consultations with the countries that began Wednesday afternoon and received by the AFP news agency.
From the opera to the bar, numerous businesses and facilities will close for weeks. Staying in public should only be “allowed with members of your own household and those of another household,” the draft resolution says. Therefore, citizens should also be asked to generally refrain from private tours and visits. Tourist overnight stays in Germany should be avoided.
To justify the new measures, it is claimed that the number of corona infections “is now increasing at an exponential rate in almost all regions of Germany”. Therefore, it is necessary to “stop the infection process by significantly reducing contacts in the population as a whole.”
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) defended the new planned cuts. “If we wait until the intensive care units are full, it will be too late,” he told Southwest Broadcasting on Wednesday. Better to “break the wave” every now and then to get the situation back under control by Christmas.
Parliamentary union group leader Ralph Brinkhaus said he hoped Chancellor Angela Merkel (both from the CDU) “would get away with it” with the proposed resolution. “I hope common sense, I hope the understanding of the Prime Minister,” he said on the RTL program “Guten Morgen Deutschland”. “The point now is that we save Christmas.”
SPD parliamentary director Carsten Schneider said in Berlin that the current second wave of corona is “more intense and serious” than the first. We have to react to that. A “uniform line” is necessary for the measures, he warned at the same time in the face of the different approaches of the federal states.
FDP leader Christian Lindner questioned the constitutionality of the new crown plans. Merkel wants “among other things, to completely shut down the restaurant industry,” he explained. “I think it is unnecessary and therefore also unconstitutional.”
The leader of the left-wing parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartsch, described the plans as “often disproportionate and ineffective.” “That can never be imposed nationally across the country.”
AfD chief Jörg Meuthen said another lockdown “would turn into a landslide for many companies and employees.” “Where reasonable hygiene concepts can sustain operations, as in hotels and restaurants, there should be no closure.”
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