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German Covid case rate hits 2 month high with leaders set to meet
The national seven-day rate of cases per 100,000 people rose to 103.9 on Sunday, German health agency the Robert Koch Institute said on its website, the most since Jan. 26.
Germany’s rate of Covid-19 infections climbed to the highest in almost two months, a day before Chancellor Angela Merkel and state leaders discuss whether to halt an easing of lockdown restrictions.
The national seven-day rate of cases per 100,000 people rose to 103.9 on Sunday, German health agency the Robert Koch Institute said on its website, the most since Jan. 26. Separate data from Johns Hopkins University showed cases in the country increased by 24,034 in the 24 hours to Sunday, compared with 10,568 recorded a week earlier.
Cases in Germany are rising again after authorities began to relax restrictions in late February and set out a plan to gradually unwind curbs. That plan depends on the infection trend, heightening the stakes for Monday’s talks.
Germany uses the incidence rate as a gauge of Covid-19’s spread. If it exceeds 100 for three days in a row, an “emergency brake” provision allows authorities to tighten lockdown measures again. That threshold had been crossed in 9 out of 16 federal states as of Sunday, prompting some state leaders to call for uniform nationwide measures for virus hotspots.
“We have an instrument that works: the emergency brake. It must be applied consistently everywhere in Germany,” Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview. “Otherwise it will become a toothless tiger.”
Soeder, whose state has an incidence rate exceeding the national average, is among the state leaders meeting Merkel to discuss whether restrictions in Europe’s largest economy should be extended into April or even tightened, rather than eased as suggested by the government at the start of the month.
Regional leaders expressed diverging views on what to do ahead of the upcoming Easter holiday when asked by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Reiner Haseloff, prime minister of Saxony-Anhalt (incidence rate: 115.1), said people should be able to vacation within the confines of their own region. But Bodo Ramelow, president of Thuringia (incidence rate: 207.7), pleaded with the population not to go on vacation at all.
“Whoever believes that you can open up entire holidaying regions without testing in the current phase of the pandemic doesn’t know what’s going on,“ Ramelow told the newspaper.
Merkel pledged to ramp up Covid vaccinations after the European Union’s regulator gave the all-clear for AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine following a scare over reports of blood clots.
“Starting in April, we want to get faster and more flexible, and we will be able to do that,” Merkel said in Berlin on Friday.
Health Minister Jens Spahn, who is facing opposition calls to resign, said earlier Friday that Germany is in a “third wave” of Covid-19 with a large number of variant-virus cases.
“There are some fairly challenging weeks ahead of us,” he said.
