“It’s too early to say whether the country will extend its partial lockdown compared to November,” German Health Minister Jens Spah told CNBC on Wednesday. .
“We need patience, really, because today’s numbers are really the infections that happened a week or so ago,” Spahn said in an interview with The Closing Bell. “It will be this weekend that we will now see the results of the new lockdown light we have done.”
According to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, the seven-day average of Germany’s new coronavirus is about 22% higher than a week ago. According to a CNBC analysis, the daily average of about 19,800 new diagnosed infections in the past week is the highest ever in the country.
“We still have an increase, yes, but much less than what we saw in recent days, for example, last week,” said Spain, who has been federal health minister since 2018. However, on Wednesday, Germany reported the largest increase in deaths in Covid-19 since April, according to Reuters.
A four-week partial lockdown in Germany took effect on November 2, with shuttering bars, restaurants and theaters closed while schools remained open. Shops may also remain open, but instead there is a restriction in capacity. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the sanctions, on Oct. 28, the country’s seven-day new case averaged more than 11,000.
Germany was praised for controlling the epidemic in the spring, but it reappeared in Covid-19 cases, such as in large parts of the European continent. On Wednesday, Merkel warned that “the second wave would be more intense” than the initial Covid-19 outbreak.
Spah acknowledged the economic challenges posed by the imposition of public-health sanctions, with little warning of a double-dip recession in the eurozone. France is also back in a partial shutdown that will last at least until 1 December. The Czech Republic, deeply strained with its health-care system, went into a second lockdown in late October which has since been extended to 20 November.
However, Spahn said aggressive measures need to be taken to control the virus before it can spread further, ultimately causing additional economic pain. That is why Germany’s sanctions are not as strict as those of its neighbors. “If you wait too long until the downdown, then you really have a lot more numbers and the downfall needs to be even tougher.”
According to Hopkins data, there are 726,172 confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany. About 12,000 people have died since Kovid-19.
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