BERLIN (GERMANY) – Germany will have to close more parts of society before Christmas to curb the coronavirus pandemic, ministers said on Friday.
Germany registered a record number of nearly 30,000 daily new coronavirus infections and almost 600 deaths, as per data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Friday.
Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said the rise in infection numbers has become challenging. The government and state premiers would have to consider extending lockdown measures across the society.
“This will lead to a lockdown that is similar in many ways to what happened in the early part of the year,” he told a virtual news conference.
Some parts of the country have already started witnessing tougher measures, including the southern state of Bavaria.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Germany should impose a harder lockdown before Christmas if it wants to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
He told Der Spiegel magazine, “If we wait until Christmas, we’ll have to struggle with high numbers for months.”
Merkel has urged German states to introduce tougher measures before Christmas, but it has been met with resistance.
Manuela Schwesig, the premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which has the second-lowest incidence of the virus, spoke out in favour of closing shops from Dec. 21.