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Germany will impose, during Easter, the strictest confinement since the beginning of the pandemic in response to the presence of the British variant in the country. Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the decision after a twelve-hour meeting with representatives of the federal states. “Essentially, we are in a new pandemic,” he justified, saying that the British variant of the virus that causes covid-19 is already the dominant one in Germany.
“Basically, we are dealing with a virus of the same type but with very different characteristics,” Merkel said. “It is significantly more lethal, significantly more infectious and contagious for longer,” he said.
The chancellor and the minister-presidents of the 16 federal states of Germany have often disagreed on the measures to be taken, but the meeting at which these measures were decided recorded a record number of hours: “Twelve hours for two days of confinement at Easter “, the newspaper headlined Time in an analysis of the measurements.
The chancellor asked the Germans to stay at home during the five days of Easter, starting on April 1, with the idea of having a kind of confinement “circuit breaker”, to break the chains of transmission of the third wave.
The number of infections is on the rise and, although fewer deaths are reported from vaccination, more and more young people are in intensive care beds, the newspaper notes. Authorities fear that intensive care will be exhausted.
The country had started a progressive deflation at the beginning of the month, but at some point the number of infections insisted not to decrease, with the head of the Robert Koch Institut (RKI), the public health authority in charge of monitoring the pandemic, pointing out the finger at infections that occurred in the school environment.
Merkel had called for the closure of all stores, including supermarkets. The presidential ministers did not accept this suggestion, but on Easter days only some establishments will be open, such as supermarkets in train stations or shops in service stations. Only on one of the days, Saturday, will they be able to open grocery stores.
Those responsible for some states, those with a coastline, still wanted restrictions on domestic travel to be relaxed, which did not happen: it is still possible to travel, but not to stay in a tourist hotel. It is possible to travel abroad, although Merkel stressed that traveling abroad is not recommended. Whoever returns will be subject to testing, but not quarantine.
Large family gatherings are prohibited, only two households and a maximum of five people are allowed.
The Government asks the Churches to renounce face-to-face religious services and opt for a digital format, as was done, incidentally, during the first confinement in 2020.
“Things are being difficult more than we had anticipated, but there is a very clear light at the end of the tunnel,” Merkel said.
The journalist of the magazine Sciences Kai Kupferschmidt noted on Twitter that in a pandemic year, Germany always had fewer cases per 1,000 inhabitants than the United States, which changed this weekend. The rate of vaccination in the United States and the number of people who have already been infected allow for easier control of transmission, he noted. In Germany, “we have to be careful and hold out for a couple more months.”
Some experts expressed doubts about the measures in statements to broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW). Tobias Kurth, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, said the most important thing was to have a solid testing plan for the reopening. “I think a tight lockdown would work, but we opened without a clear concept of rapid tests, or without having enough rapid tests available,” he said.
On Twitter, SPD deputy Karl Lauterbach, a health specialist, stresses that a brief confinement at Easter “would only work if it gives a signal that we have a big problem and people are changing their behavior during and after the confinement.” He also defended that there should be confinement in companies and schools until the testing programs are functional. “I know how unpopular containment measures are. But no country dominated the wave [da variante] B117 without confinement ”.
Andrew Ullmann, spokesman for the health commission of the German Parliament, the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), thinks that the fatigue of the population will avoid a “restricted confinement”, as he told DW. “What really worries me is that we are going from confinement to confinement with no prospect for our population.”
