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Schools, sports and leisure facilities and most shops will remain closed until January 31, Chancellor Angela Merkel said after talks with the leaders of the 16 German Länder.
In addition, the new rules will allow a maximum of two people from different households to meet. Previously, gatherings of up to five people were allowed.
Living in areas where seven-day morbidity exceeds 200 new infections 100,000. population, it will be prohibited to go out more than 15 km from the limit of the area.
Merkel acknowledged that these limitations will be particularly severe for parents, who have had to combine working with childcare in distance education for weeks. However, the Chancellor stressed that stricter measures are needed to reduce weekly morbidity to 50 new cases of COVID-19 for every 100,000 cases. population.
“Winter … is the time when the effects of a pandemic can be most severe, and with the contribution of the mutated virus … it is absolutely necessary” to reduce morbidity to a level that allows services to reapply their contact tracing and isolation strategy, Merkel.
Following the emergence of potentially more contagious new coronavirus variants, the German Länder agreed to intensify quarantine inspections for newcomers from affected areas.
Those arriving from risk areas abroad will need to take the COVID-19 test before arriving in Germany, as will the current isolation requirement.
It will only be possible to terminate the isolation five days after arrival if the COVID-19 test is negative.
“Great challenges”
On December 30, the number of daily COVID-19 deaths recorded in Germany surpassed a thousand, increasing pressure to stop to more than 35,000. the spread of a disease that has already claimed human lives.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said “hospitals are working at capacity in many places.”
In a televised New Year’s speech, Merkel had already warned Germans of a difficult winter ahead, highlighting that “the challenges posed by the pandemic remain enormous.”
In the most populous country in the European Union, the epidemiological situation was better than that of most of its neighbors during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mortality from the disease in Germany is still lower than in countries such as Italy, France or Spain.
However, epidemiologists say that the over-relaxation of this relative success and the reluctance to take stricter measures likely contributed to the spread of the lightning virus in the fall.
A vaccination campaign has been launched in the country since December 26. To date, about 317 thousand. people have already received the first of the two required doses of the vaccine.
A Merkel spokesman said the latest results of the vaccination campaign “give us great hope.”
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