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In the fight against the corona pandemic, the existing blockade in Germany will last until April 18. This is reported by various media outlets outside the deliberations of the federal and state governments. A final decision on future measures is still pending. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the prime ministers wanted to discuss more specific regulations, also with a view to Easter. But in the evening, the negotiations were interrupted for several hours due to massive differences.
Chancellor Merkel is said to have been dissatisfied previously. The measures discussed so far are not enough to break the dynamics of the infection, he said. This is not how you can survive in public. There was also a dispute over restrictions on Easter holidays. In regional circles there was talk of an open conflict between Merkel and five prime ministers who wanted to enable domestic tourism under strict conditions. If Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate continue to insist on wanting to allow their citizens “contactless holidays” in their own federal state despite the third crown wave that includes variants of the virus, they could not make the decision to contribute to the Prime Minister’s Conference, the Chancellor is said to have said according to the German Press Agency.
According to a draft decision document for the videoconference that started in the afternoon, there should also be advice on the consistent implementation of the emergency brake decided in early March for high incidence values.
The federal and state governments do not want to loosen strict contact rules for family members visiting during Easter. The German Press Agency learned of this from various sources.
Before the deliberations, there was talk of relaxing the contact rules a bit during Easter and allowing family visits. Specifically, there was a proposal to allow meetings with four people outside their own home plus children up to the age of 14 from the closest family circle.
In early March, the federal and state governments decided that private meetings between one’s home and another home are possible, but limited to a maximum of five people. Children up to 14 years old are not counted. Couples are considered one household.
The airlines want to test the returnees from Mallorca
German airlines want to test the returnees from Mallorca for themselves. What did the picture– Newspaper Monday night. This was confirmed to the German Press Agency in government circles. The newspaper named the airlines Tui, Condor, Eurowings and Lufthansa, which still wanted to test the island. Now locations are being sought and up to 40,000 returnees are at stake at Easter. Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) has campaigned massively in recent hours to ensure that airlines carry out tests.
A week ago, the federal government removed the Germans’ favorite island from the list of risk areas and removed the travel warning due to the sharp drop in infection rates. This also means that there is no longer an obligation to test or quarantine returnees. This has led to a booking boom, but also heated discussions about whether a new source of infection is being risked. Thus, during deliberations by the federal and state governments on Monday, there were calls for the reintroduction of mandatory testing and also for the reintroduction of quarantine.
The Association of German Teachers asks for additional funding and a voluntary additional year
Since March last year there has been a back and forth between the closing and opening of schools, between regular and alternate lessons, between classrooms and digital broadcasts. And more and more children and adolescents are infected with crown mutants. This is one of the reasons an extension of the lockdown is looming.
However, it is not a completely lost school year, says the president of the Association of German Teachers, Heinz-Peter Meidinger. Of course, there are shortcomings among many students. But to compensate for this, “additional accompanying funds” and the possibility of an additional voluntary year are required. However, he considers suggestions such as lessons on Saturdays and shorter holidays to be the “completely wrong approach.”
With no vaccines or rapid tests currently available, Meidinger hopes that normal school operations will only be possible in the new school year. Teachers should also get vaccinated as a matter of priority, he says. This is the only way to truly satisfy the desire for open schools.
NRW: New Corona regulation with stricter requirements
The North Rhine-Westphalia state government has reinstated the retail trade restrictions that were lifted by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster with a revision of the Crown regulation. For stationers, bookstores and garden centers, the new regulation means stricter requirements, as the NRW Health Ministry announced on Monday.
The High Administrative Court had previously struck down many crown-related restrictions, such as customer limits per square meter and mandatory retail appointment booking for NRW. According to the court, the restrictions violated the constitutional principle of equal treatment.
The court emphasized that there is scope for the legislature to fight pandemics. It is also allowed to loosen gradually. Therefore, the state was basically allowed to drop the previous regulations for businesses such as food retailers, while for other businesses only a small number of customers were allowed for the time being. But the country is exceeding its room for maneuver, where there is no plausible reason for further differentiation. This is the case to the extent that bookstores, stationery stores and garden centers with their entire range can now also be operated under simplified conditions, that is, without reservation of appointments, but fashion stores or electronics chains they are not. A branch of the electronics chain Media Markt had filed a lawsuit in Münster.
In its decision, however, the Senate also expressly noted that the state was free to make new regulation at short notice that did not contain inadmissible differentiations. The Senate did not share the fundamental concerns raised by Media Markt about the proportionality of the restrictions in the retail sector. In particular, the restriction of the fundamental rights of retailers is likely to be justified in light of the serious consequences that an uncontrolled increase in new infections would have on the lives and health of many people.
Intensive Care Physician: “Expect a Rapid Increase in the Next Weeks”
After the first cautious relief from the pandemic, the number of corona patients in Germany’s intensive care units has increased again. With more than 3000 beds occupied, the load is currently again as high as in the peak hours of the first wave in spring 2020. This can be found in the record of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine ( DIVI).
“Now we are starting the third wave in intensive care units and at a very high level. We had already warned about this at the end of February and that is causing us great concern,” said Divi president Gernot Marx. According to DIVI data, 3,056 Covid 19 patients were treated in German intensive care units on Sunday. “We expect a rapid increase in the number of patients in the coming weeks, as the wave of intensive care patients always follows the wave of infections for two to three weeks,” he added. Therefore, the numbers can only be changed from mid-April. With incidences of around 200 infections in seven days per 100,000 inhabitants, emergency physicians anticipate around 5,000 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units in early May. That would be almost as many as at the height of the second wave in early January and could again place a heavy burden on many clinics. The good news: If there is no new, more dangerous mutant and vaccination continues well, the pandemic could be as good as the end for clinic emergency rooms in August based on the current forecast.
The experts do not want to take the situation lightly. “We can already see in intensive care units that patients are changing there – they are getting younger,” said Lars Schaade, vice president of the Robert Koch Institute. Virologists have also repeatedly warned that vaccinating older cohorts alone does not produce any relaxation. Because even in the first wave, only about a quarter of intensive care patients were over 80 years old. Many nursing home residents died in their facilities and never went to intensive care units. The RKI counts 21.6 million people in Germany in the high-risk group for severe Covid-19 courses. The institute rates the risk as much higher for people over 65 or with certain pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease or the most serious form of obesity.
“With nearly 6,000 patients concurrently, Covid is by far the heaviest and strongest wave in intensive care medicine,” said DIVI intensive care registry scientific director Christian Karagiannidis. The current number of more than 3000 does not apply to DIVI as a magic limit from which a system overload automatically begins. Karagiannidis emphasized that this order of magnitude can be supplied. “The more the number increases, the more other areas must be restricted to ensure emergency care.”
The increase in numbers also has consequences for clinical teams. “This is not technical overstrain, it is physical and mental,” said DIVI member Felix Walcher. Staff burnout can be observed at the national level. The sense of responsibility motivates. “But that also runs out at some point.” Especially when the appreciation and support in clinics and society is not shown and lived long enough. “There is great concern that chronic staff overload will lead to an exodus of employees from the healthcare sector.”
The fact that the health system has not collapsed in recent months also has to do with the lessons of the first wave and the advances to avoid courses of serious diseases. In Germany, at the end of 2020, the proportion of hospital patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units was cut in half compared to the first months of the pandemic: according to a study to 14 percent in December. However, the chances of survival are no better than a year ago for patients receiving invasive ventilation: about half of them die.
RKI reports 7709 new infections
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 7,709 new infections on Monday. That’s 1105 more cases than on Monday a week ago. The seven-day incidence increases to 107.3 from 103.9 the day before. The value indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants have contracted the coronavirus in the last seven days. 50 people have died in relation to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours. This increases the number of reported deaths to 74,714. In total, more than 2.667 million people in Germany have tested positive for the coronavirus so far.
