New lockdown measures applied to German region over outbreak
● Slaughterhouse identified as source is criticised for use of sub-contractors
German authorities have slapped new lockdown measures on a western region that has seen hundreds of coronavirus infections linked to a slaughterhouse, trying to make sure the cluster does not race into the wider community.
More than 1,550 people have tested positive for coronavirus at the Toennies slaughterhouse in Rheda-wiedenbrueck. Thousands more workers and family members have been put under a quarantine to try to halt the outbreak.
The company has blamed its workforce, which is made up of mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe, for bringing the virus in.
Union officials say the outbreak is due to the terrible working and living conditions employees faced under looseand ly regulated sub-contractors. The governor of North Rhinewestphalia state, Armin Laschet, said people in Guetersloh and parts of a neighbouring county for the next week will face some of the same restrictions that existed across Germany during the early stages of the pandemic in March.
These include limiting the number of people who can meet in public to those from a single household or two people from separate households, Mr Laschet said.
“We will order a lockdown for the whole of Guetersloh county,” he said. “The purpose is to calm the situation, to expand testing to establish whether or not the virus has spread beyond the employees of Toennies.
“We will get a better picture of the situation through intensive testing, and can then see more clearly within seven days what the situation is.”
Cinemas, fitness studios and bars will be closed, but stores will remain open and restaurants can still serve customers from the same household. Previously, the western county had only closed schools daycare centres, sparking anger from parents who said their children were being punished for failings at the slaughterhouse.
Prior to the Toennies outbreak, Germany had been widely praised for its handling of the pandemic. Intensive testing, tracing and hospital preparation measures kept Germany’s death toll five times smaller than Britain’s. Germany has seen more than 8,900 confirmed virus deaths and about 192,000 cases.
Toennies, a family-owned company, has been criticised for using sub-contractors for parts of its operation. The practice, which is common in the German meat industry and which the government now wants to ban, often results in migrant workers living in cramped communal housing and being transported to abattoirs in minibuses, heightening the risk of infection.
A video circulating on social media also showed workers at Toennies seated close together during break times, although the company has disputed how recent the video is.
Mr Laschet expressed his frustration yesterday at the company’s handling of the outbreak, saying authorities had to order Toennies – Germany’s biggest meat processing company – to release the names of its employees. “The readiness to co-operate could have been greater,” he said.
Mr Laschet said the measures will be lifted on 30 June if the situation had improved, but declined to provide specific parameters for success. He also urged other regions in Germany not to discriminate against people from Guetersloh.
The German news agency dpa reported 14 people on vacation, some of them from Guetersloh, were told on Monday to leave the Baltic Sea island of Usedom – a popular holiday resort. And Bavaria issued a ban on hotels renting rooms to people from Guetersloh or other countries with more than 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Exceptions will be made for people who can present a negative coronavirus test.