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Counties with more than 50 new crown infections per 100,000 residents must pull the “emergency brake” in the event of a loosening after the agreement between the federal and state governments. This currently affects four circles. However, many others are “crown free”.
Another district has reached the upper limit set by the federal and state governments for new crown infections: in the Sonneberg district in southern Thuringia, the value on Sunday morning was 66.7 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, as A spokesman for the district office told the dpa news agency. By then, a total of 155 infections had been detected in the district.
The federal and state governments agreed to a significant relaxation of the crown requirements on Wednesday. At the same time, however, they decided that a concept of restriction should be implemented if more than 50 new infections were registered for every 100,000 inhabitants within a week in independent districts or cities, a so-called “emergency brake”.
Three other districts had previously exceeded this limit: Greiz in Thuringia, Coesfeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, and Steinburg in Schleswig-Holstein. They are marked in red on the corresponding map of the Robert Koch Institute. Eight other counties are orange: More than 25 new infections were reported here for every 100,000 residents per week. RKI numbers are updated once a day at midnight.
Numerous “crownless” counties
According to the Landramtsamt, a hospital in Sonneberg is a focus of infection. Employees were also infected here. Therefore, in coordination with the clinic, a temporary admission stop was decided there on Friday night. The emergency room is not affected. The treatment of critical and life-threatening cases is guaranteed. But there are also new infections in the district outside the hospital. “We will continue to monitor and examine the situation very critically and, if necessary, we will take tougher measures as part of the new regulation,” the spokesperson stressed.
This is already the case in Coesfeld: here relaxation has been postponed for a week. In the region and in Schleswig-Holstein Steinburg, this is directly related to the many crown cases in slaughterhouses. Hundreds of workers mainly from Eastern Europe became infected there, apparently because their collective accommodation did not have sufficient hygiene facilities and was too narrow to maintain a minimum distance of 1.5 meters.
According to RKI’s overview, the vast majority of counties in Germany are currently well below the upper limit for new crown infections. In numerous circles, not even new cases have been recorded in the past seven days. These include the Hessian Vogelsbergkreis, Uelzen in Lower Saxony, or Haßberge in Bavaria. Several cities in the district had no new infections last week, such as Baden-Baden, Bamberg, Würzburg, Jena, Cottbus, Pirmasens, or Schwerin.
Critique of the upper limit
The upper limit of the crown is also criticized. The German Foundation for Patient Protection, for example, criticizes it as too high. “While politicians were first said to obey virologists, experts’ warnings are now ignored,” said the foundation’s board, Eugen Brysch. Instead of 50, a maximum of 35 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants would now be appropriate to prevent a second wave of infections. Brysch complained that solidarity with people in the high-risk group had been exhausted. In individual cases, counties with critical values attempted to circumvent stricter containment measures. “This is fatal in the current situation,” Brysch warned, demanding that countries establish binding standards for districts and cities.
Greens in the Bundestag demanded more clarity from the federal government and federal states on how to deal with the Corona crisis. They propose five levels of crown warning with corresponding testing requirements. The media reported on a concept of the Greens, which takes into account the different regional development events. The five levels range from the so-called critical points to regions where there are almost no cases. In hot spot regions with a particularly large number of infections, everyone should be tested as a precaution. Only in regions with the lowest crown warning level only people with symptoms should be tested according to the previous recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute. A relapse and a second wave could only be prevented through “tightly knit and regionally adapted controls,” Green Party leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt told the AFP news agency.
