New lockdowns in Germany, France
BERLIN/ PARIS• Germany announced plans to shut down large swathes of public life for a month on Wednesday while France prepared to tighten controls further as COVID surged across Europe and financial markets tumbled at the likely cost of a second lockdown.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met state premiers in a video conference and agreed a partial lockdown that will see bars, restaurants, cinemas, sports facilities and trade fairs closing from Nov. 2 to Nov. 30.
“November will be a month of truth. The increasing numbers of infections are forcing us to take tough countermeasures in order to break the second wave,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Twitter after the meeting.
People should reduce contacts outside their immediate household to “the absolute minimum necessary” and policing measures to enforce the rules will be stepped up. However schools and many businesses will continue to operate and shops are allowed to remain open on condition they set strict social distancing limits.
In France, which has seen more than 50,000 new cases a day, President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce further restrictions following curfew measures introduced across much of the country last week.
News television BFM TV reported that the government was considering a month-long lockdown from midnight on Thursday, but there was no confirmation from Macron's office.
The measures in Germany and France, following similar moves in Italy and Spain would be less severe than the near-total lockdowns imposed at the start of the crisis in March and April.
But, despite government pledges to help businesses affected by the new measures, the economic cost is likely to be heavy, wiping out the fragile signs of recovery seen over the summer.
While leaders have been desperate to avoid the crippling cost of lockdowns, the new restrictions reflect mounting alarm at the galloping pace of the pandemic from Spain, France and Germany to Russia, Poland and Bulgaria.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Wednesday that hospital beds were at 90% of capacity in 16 regions of the country, while officials have warned that even wellequipped health systems like those in France and Switzerland could reach breaking point within days.
Hopes that new treatments might curb the spread were dented when the head of Britain's vaccine procurement task force said that a fully effective vaccine may never be developed and that early versions were likely to be imperfect.
The European Commission called on governments to step up their response and coordinate testing strategies and said there was still time to hold back the disease.