Germany Breaks Record For Covid-19 Deaths, Enters New Lockdown
This week Germany broke its record for Covid-19 deaths within a 24 hour period after 952 individuals unfortunately lost their lives to the virus. The previous record for the country was 598, which was set just last week. These staggering numbers have forced Germany to enter another nationwide lockdown to hopefully curb the spread of this virus that has now infected nearly 1.4 million people in the country.
According to the Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI), Germany tallied 27,728 new cases on Tuesday alone, the nation has been surpassing 20,000 new cases a day for some time now, hence the nationwide lockdown. The lockdown went into effect this Wednesday, so it’s likely more cases will continue to appear within the next two weeks, and hopefully after that curve will start to flatten.
German leaders are extremely concerned with the growing number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The head of RKI recently released a statement in which they claimed that the pandemic was “as serious as it has ever been” for the country; RKI has been monitoring Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic much like Johns Hopkins University has been here in the US.
“At the moment far too many people are getting infected, and we need to be prepared for the situation to get much worse over Christmas.”
Germany’s Health Minister, Jens Spahn, has joined a multitude of other European country leaders and ministers to call upon the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to approve a vaccine as soon as possible. The country is expected to begin vaccinating residents within two to four days of the vaccines approval.
According to Spahn the main “goal is to get approval before Christmas, as we want to start vaccinating in Germany before 2020 ends.” Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeir addressed the country in a rare speech this Wednesday, claiming that the pandemic is literally “dead serious” and it should be taken as such.
“From Wednesday onwards, our public and private life will be more restricted than we have ever seen in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Drastic measures can’t be avoided this time.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel made the official lockdown announcement this past weekend. Under these new restrictions all non-essential retail and business services will be closed until January 10th, 2021. All schools and kindergartens will also be closed until that date, and Christmas gatherings are to be limited to just five people; unless you’ve been quarantining in a house with more than five people of course.
“If we have too many contacts now before Christmas, and that ends up making it the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we will have failed. We should not do that,” the Chancellor said in her passionate address to the nation. The head of RKI added to this statement claiming that he already expects Germany to see a massive rise in cases within the next few weeks, but there is hope that this strict shutdown will curb the spread and hopefully relieve some of the pressure for the country’s brave healthcare industry workers.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
