NOW GERMANY SHUTS
.. AND IN FRANCE ACTORS, MUSICIANS AND ARTS WORKERS PROTEST AGAINST VENUES’ PROLONGED CLOSURE
CHRISTMAS markets stood deserted and children took school lessons at home as Germany launched a national lockdown yesterday.
Stricter measures are in place after Covid death rates reached record levels.
A total of 952 deaths were reported yesterday – far greater than the previous record of 598, set on Friday – taking Germany’s overall toll to 23,427.
Shops and schools have been closed after the Robert Koch Institute – the country’s disease control centre – recorded 179.8 Covid deaths per 100,000 residents last week. It stood at 149 per 100,000 a week earlier.
Ministers have also limited private gatherings to two households with a maximum of five people in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.
The measures are expected to be in place until at least January 10.
Restaurants and bars were closed in a ‘lockdown light’ at the start of last month but shops remained open. And while the measures succeeded in levelling off infection rates, cases have more than quadrupled compared with the first wave of the virus, data shows.
Cases peaked at about 6,000 in March, but 27,728 were reported yesterday. Berlin has urged the European Medicines Agency to speed up approval of a coronavirus vaccine, and hopes to roll out jabs before the end of the year.
Urging people to respect the rules, health minister Jens Spahn said: ‘By summer we’ll be able to return to normal, step by step.’
Meanwhile, hundreds of actors, musicians and film and theatre workers launched a protest in Paris after the government was forced to scrap the planned reopening of arts venue.
Prime minister Jean Castex ordered cinemas, theatres, museums and concert halls to remain closed until at least January 7 after a rise in infection rates. He said the decision was a ‘particularly painful one for us to make’.