Germany set to extend Covid lockdown by 3 weeks

Berlin, Mar 2 (efe-epa).- Germany, which has been under a nationwide lockdown since before Christmas, is set to extend the measures until March 28, according to reports leaked to the media ahead of a meeting on Wednesday between the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the 16 leaders of the country’s federal states.

They are expected to announce that shops can reopen in areas where the seven-day cumulative infection rate is 35 per 100,000 people or lower.

This week hair salons reopened, while gardening centers and florists also restarted business in certain states. Schools were allowed to partially reopen on February 22.

Germany has been under some form of lockdown since early November, when bars, restaurants and other cultural spaces were forced to close. Those measures were toughened in the run up to Christmas.

After more than a month with a clear decline in cases and in the number of ICU patients, the key figures have plateaued in the last two weeks and have even slightly increased, causing fears of a third wave caused by the spread of the most contagious new variants.

Germany announced 3,943 new positives in one day on Tuesday (10% of the peak of the second wave) and 358 deaths (a third of the daily record). The seven-day cumulative incidence was 65.4 new cases per 100,000 people, after reaching a record of 200 at the end of December. EFE-EPA

jpm/ks