Health

Bavaria announces tougher lockdown measures

Berlin, Dec 6 (efe-epa).- The state of Bavaria in southern Germany on Sunday announced stricter lockdown measures, including a nighttime curfew, state leader Markus Söder said.

Germany has been under a partial lockdown since early November, although case numbers – which have been stable nationwide – have not fallen in the way health officials had hoped for.

The Bavarian prime minister had called a special meeting of the regional government, after which he announced a 10-point plan to fight the pandemic, which will see some of the restrictions that already are in place be toughened.

“The numbers are simply too high,” Söder said, adding that the nationwide partial lockdown had succeeded in capping rising infections but that it had not been effective enough in bringing those rates down to more manageable levels.

From December 9 onwards, people in Bavaria will only be allowed to leave their homes “for important reasons”, such as going to work or school.

In districts where there is a weekly incidence of more than 200 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants there will be a curfew between 9pm and 5am local time.

The rule that there can only be meetings between people who belong to a maximum of two households will be maintained, although that restriction will be lifted during the period between December 23 and 26, but not for the New Year.

The regional parliament is expected to approve the new rules on Tuesday.

On Sunday, 17,767 new cases of coronavirus were registered, 3,100 more than a week ago, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

In the last 24 hours, 255 people died from Covid-19.

Since the beginning of the pandemic there have been 1,176,992 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Germany, 19,041 people have died while 846,273 have recovered from the disease. EFE-EPA

rz/ks

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