Masks to be ‘part of daily life’
The German government is under pressure to make mask wearing compulsory in public after the success of a city-wide trial.
Several German regions and cities sent a clear signal to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government that they don’t see its advice on face masks as adequate, with two states announcing individual measures to enforce face mask usage.
The eastern state of Saxony announced that everyone will have to wear a face mask, as of today, when entering shops or travelling on public transport. Wolfsburg, home town of Volkswagen, and MecklenburgWestern Pomerania soon followed suit, announcing mandatory masks in public starting next week.
Stephan Weil, state leader in Lower Saxony, said he was ‘‘convinced that everyday face masks will soon become part of our public life and that they could be made compulsory on public transport as soon as we have enough stocks’’.
The moves come after the city of Jena saw new cases flatline since it brought in compulsory masks on April 6. Yesterday was the tenth in a row that no new cases were reported there, although authorities have declined to say if they believe masks played a role.
Last week, while announcing a gradual relaxation of lockdown, Merkel stopped short of enforcing face mask usage in public, instead calling it a ‘‘strong recommendation’’.
Stockpiles would not appear to be a problem, as the government confirmed earlier in the month it had received delivery of 80 million masks while official guidelines make clear that using a scarf or a homemade mask is acceptable. Despite growing political pressure, a blanket mask requirement remains controversial among virologists.
Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute in Hamburg has called the debate ‘‘misguided’’, saying ‘‘we need to try and achieve a slow infection of the population, 100 per cent protection doesn’t help anyone’’.
In France, Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, promised yesterday that masks would be widely distributed ‘‘within weeks’’ as it prepares a gradual exit from lockdown starting on May 11, by when, he said, mask wearing in public would likely be compulsory.
France’s severe shortage of masks has provoked public anger. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said half a million masks would he handed out to residents by the end of this month. She pledged that the more than two million people living in central Paris would receive free masks by mid-May.
In Spain, the government has announced that it is to fix the cost of face masks to prevent abusive pricing in a situation where demand has outstripped supply.
Spain has struggled to import sufficient quantities of masks during the crisis, and last week the health ministry was forced to order the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of FFP2 masks from hospitals after a batch, purchased from China, was found to be substandard.
Security forces handed out up to 10 million face masks to people travelling to work in the days after the Easter weekend, when Spain’s economic lockdown was eased to allow workers in construction and other non-essential sectors to return to their jobs.
Ministers have said that sufficient face masks will be available for the entire population to purchase from chemists this week with the national healthcare card, as in the case of prescription drugs.
The CGCF pharmacies’ body has welcomed the move as the only way to ‘‘prioritise distribution to the most vulnerable’’, but it also warned that as of Friday it had not been informed of any timetable for the roll-out.
Fernando Simon, the head of Spain’s health emergency department,
said yesterday that there was still no plan to make the use of masks obligatory.
‘‘The use of face masks is a recommendation, but it is just one of many ways to reduce the risk of contagion.’’
In Germany, where official figures put fatalities at the relatively low figure of 4300, the pandemic is continuing to erode the popularity of the far-Right AfD party and the Greens. The AfD has fallen into the single digits for the first time in three years, while the environmental party has slumped from the low twenties to the mid-teens as voters rally behind Merkel’s CDU, which is widely viewed to be managing well.