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The trip to beautiful Budapest, including a visit to the stadium for the game against FC Sevilla, should make one or two FC Bayern Munich fans reconsider: quarantine for all Bavarian returnees who are in the risk zone of the Hungarian Crown at the “Puskas Arena” on Thursday evening. “He is in the European Super Cup,” announced Prime Minister Markus Söder. Even if you have spent less than 48 hours in Budapest.
In Munich there is fear of the virus, more recently the weekly upper limit of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants was exceeded. The Bavarian state capital is now a hotspot for Corona due to critical incidence figures, as is the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district in the heart of Berlin, where parts of the U30 generation party prevailed, or the district of Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony.
Very different places. And beyond the critical points, the infection curve continues to increase day by day throughout the country.
The weather for the last week and a half was still beautiful in late summer. Many gathered outside, on the terrace, in the beer garden, in the park. How is it supposed to be from Friday, when, according to meteorologists, gray and cold autumn is approaching? When social life is increasingly shifting towards closed spaces?
After all: at the request of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Federal Labor Ministry has just drafted a “Recommendation on ventilation in accordance with infection control”. In addition, the Ministry of Economy has a financing program worth 500 million euros for better ventilation systems.
But of course it doesn’t happen that fast, of course it won’t be enough. And that’s why the political debate reopened this Monday: What measures can help? Will there be severe restrictions on public life again? What have we learned in the last few months?
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Above all there is the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Söder. The head of the CSU has a reputation for defending himself as an uncompromising anti-crown and, at the same time, has serious problems in his country. Therefore, at the end of last week, he worked to ensure that contrary to the original plan, spectators were not allowed into the stadium for Bayern’s Bundesliga opener in Munich. However, he could not avoid the irresponsible behavior of the club’s leaders in the official gallery. So now your quarantine announcement.
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For the city of Munich, Söder raised a mask requirement in public places. On Monday, the city announced that starting Thursday, a mask requirement would be enforced in certain squares and streets, including Marienplatz and Viktualienmarkt. Also, only groups of a maximum of five people or people from two households can meet in the public area. For private celebrations such as birthdays, weddings or funerals, there is a maximum limit of 25 people indoors and 50 people for outdoor gatherings.
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Federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, is confident in the expansion of the medical infrastructure. He wants to create numerous regional “fever clinics”. The goal is to prepare for the test options beyond normal practice operations as they already existed in many locations in the spring. It’s important to make sure that the people in the waiting room don’t infect each other, Spahn says.
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CDU Prime Minister Armin Laschet wants to implement his “Corona brake” in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the course of which, in cities and districts where the incidence number is higher than 35, local authorities must coordinate countermeasures immediately with the State Health Center and the corresponding district government. If the value of 50 cases is exceeded, “request additional protection measures“, as stated in the NRW Crown Protection Ordinance. Always in the hope that this will avoid widespread crashes.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to discuss the further course with the prime minister in the next week due to the increase in Corona’s hotspots in Munich and elsewhere.
The hope of keeping the infection process manageable by allowing citizens to behave responsibly without further regulation? It’s probably gone. Polls show that the vast majority of Germans see the virus as a threat and support strict rules, but even in this group, not everyone seems to behave accordingly in everyday life.
Distance, mask requirements and other hygiene rules are not only undermined by crown deniers. You can see this every day all over Germany on the streets, in restaurants and bars.
In Saxony-Anhalt people are still relaxed
The rather relaxed Corona-wise summer, you may have this impression, has increased carelessness when it comes to viruses. Even if mortality is currently below the figures of the first wave of the Crown in Germany, it could take revenge in the coming months, fear in the Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of Health and some state chancelleries.
However, not at all.
The prime minister of the CDU of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, for example, does not see the need to act on the infection process in his state. “Infections in Saxony-Anhalt are increasing slightly but are still traceable and there is currently no reason to think about tightening the measures again,” Haseloff told SPIEGEL. “If the numbers change, we could tighten the measures again at any time.”
Even that is considered by so-called lateral thinkers and their allies in the Bundestag, the AfD, as exaggerated and alarming. But there are also criticisms of the new FDP rules. “There are virtually no proven infections outdoors, so a stricter mask requirement doesn’t help,” said SPIEGEL Vice President Michael Theurer. “This is once again Mr. Söder’s symbolic policy.”
Theurer, who is also the head of the FDP in Baden-Württemberg, continues: “We expect the numbers to increase due to the season and the cold, but I think it is not appropriate to think of a drastic tightening of the measures.”
Greens criticize lack of strategy
The Greens, for their part, criticize the fact that the strategy at the federal level is limited to “individual measures or individual proposals by individual ministers”, as party leader Annalena Baerbock puts it. A comprehensive strategy should have been drawn up already in summer, she complains. There is talk of “pandemic advice” that the Greens have been asking for for a long time.
You must ensure that “there are also sufficient staff available for Mr. Spahn’s fever centers”; This requires more than mere action from individuals, so Baerbock.
Basically, however, the head of the Greens believes that it is correct that the policy now focuses on the increase in the number of infections: the drastic developments that can be seen in some neighboring countries must be avoided.
The EU wants to avoid first wave mistakes
You can also see these developments in Brussels: the EU is doing its best to respond to a second crown wave in a less chaotic way than the first. This Tuesday, at a meeting of European Ministers in Brussels, a document from the German government, which currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU, will be on the table. According to the Berlin progress report, which is available to SPIEGEL, the crown decisions of the member states will be based on common data going forward:
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The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) will present the number of new infections during the last 14 days and the test rate per 100,000 inhabitants, and also how many of the tests have tested positive.
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The ECDC is also supposed to provide statistics on the situation in hospitals and the number of deaths.
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On the basis of these harmonized data, Member States must take decisions on countermeasures; the public must be informed at least 24 hours before the measures are implemented.
However, it is not certain that a harmonized database will also lead to harmonized decisions. This is only a first step, it is said from EU circles. Because both the infection rate and the health system situation are sometimes very different from one member country to another. “That makes a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution difficult,” says an EU diplomat.
You don’t have to tell anyone in Germany: even here, the federal system ensures that the federal states attach great importance to their own approaches in the fight against Corona, especially considering the sometimes very different situation depending on the country.
Furthermore, within the EU, health policy and border protection remain the responsibility of individual Member States; the Commission has little to say here. The German government also admits this in its report.
However, the fear of new border closures or lockdowns is rampant in Brussels.
There are “big concerns” about the rapid increase in the number of infections in France and Spain, for example, says CDU politician Peter Liese, health policy spokesman for the PPE group in the European Parliament. And he also believes: Even in Germany, “without additional measures, a strong spread of the virus in the coming weeks cannot be prevented.”
