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After eight hours of discussions with the provincial heads of government, the chancellor stressed that the epidemic must be stopped, not only because the healthcare system may be overloaded, but also because Germany “cannot afford it once again economically”like in early spring, during the first wave of the epidemic.
As he said, the exponential growth must stop anyway and as soon as possible, “otherwise there will be no good end” to the process. To see this, just look around the Germany neighborhood.
The Permanent Conciliation Forum of the Provincial Heads of Government, the so-called Prime Minister’s Conference (MPC) and the Chancellor agreed on new rules for hotspots in the most infected areas, including restrictions on restaurant opening hours and gatherings of people living outside the same home.
In just ten days, it will be possible to assess how effective they are and whether the new rules, which have been in place for months, will curb the epidemic, Angela Merkel said, noting that Germany is facing crucial days.
It may also be necessary to introduce even stricter restrictions.
added.
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, MPK Chairman-in-Office, emphasized: Germany is much closer to another general short circuit than many think. Furthermore, the situation is perhaps even more difficult than in the March-April period, because “then we had the hope of spring, but now we have the challenge of winter.”
The epidemic “will not last forever, but if we make a mistake now, the consequences will be more serious than the task before us”, that is, to stop the epidemic, said Markus Söder.
Berlin Mayor Michael Müller, head of the provincial capital’s government and vice president of the MPK, stressed that Germany has performed well so far, so there have been few restrictions in daily life internationally, but recent epidemiological data they could easily lead to “significantly more severe restrictions”. “should be entered.
As you said, infectious hygiene precautions in many areas of life, from the school system to retail, are effective, but there are areas where the necessary precautions to stop the epidemic are not in place. There are problems, especially in the area of entertainment, the common celebration of alcohol consumption, so austerity must be introduced here now, explained Michael Müller, stressing that everyone must understand that a global health crisis cannot be solved without restrictions.
The starting point for a set of rules called a hotspot strategy is that the new type of coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) spreads the most when people crowd indoors and together for an extended period of time. Hotspots are divided into two groups. Less severely infected are those administrative units – districts, cities, metropolitan districts – in which the number of infected per 100,000 inhabitants registered in the previous seven days exceeds 35. The other group, particularly the most severely infected regions, includes those administrative units in which this proportion has exceeded 50.
The rules stipulate, among other things, that a mandatory closing time of 23 hours must be introduced in restaurants and entertainment venues that operate at hotspots, and the maximum number of participants in events, celebrations and meetings must be limited to 25 and 10 at particularly infected access points.
According to data from the Robert Koch National Institute of Public Health (RKI) on Wednesday, 47 of the 412 administrative units fall into the category of particularly infected focal points. These are mainly metropolitan districts such as Berlin, Bremen, Essen, Frankfurt and Cologne or all or many districts.
According to RKI data on Wednesday, there have been 5,132 new infections in the last 24 hours. This is an increase of more than a thousand cases compared to 4122 the day before.
The number of cases confirmed by the test increased to 334,585.
The number of deaths related to the disease caused by the virus (Covid-19) has risen much more, by 43, from 1pm the day before, leaving 9,677 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in Germany.
At the same time, the seven-day moving average of the virus’s so-called reproduction rate (R) decreased slightly, from 1.25 a day earlier to 1.20. This means that every 100 infected people transmit the virus to an average of 120 more people.
Cover image source: MTI / EPA / AFP / John Thys
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