Infections surge as Germany eases its lockdown
GERMANY’S infection rate has spiked just as the country starts to ease its lockdown.
The R-rate, the rate at which coronavirus reproduces, rose from 0.65 to 1.1. A number less than one means the disease is in retreat, with each victim passing it on to less than one other person.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned new lockdowns could be imposed on a local basis if the virus surges again. Karl Lauterbach, a Social Democrat politician and professor of epidemiology, warned this was possible after he saw large crowds on Saturday in his home city of Cologne.
‘It has to be expected that the R rate will go over 1 and we will return to exponential growth,’ he said in a tweet.
‘The loosening measures were far too poorly prepared.’
The Robert Koch Institute said yesterday that cases had increased by 667 to 169,218, and the death toll was up 26 to 7,395. ‘It is too early to infer whether the number of new infections will continue to decrease as in the past weeks or increase again,’ the government institute said.
It warned the R figure was subject to ‘statistical uncertainty’.
Three meat-packing factories in the north were responsible for more than 300 new cases in recent days. Unions blamed the outbreaks on a reliance on cheap foreign labour housed in workers’ barracks. Over the weekend, police made dozens of arrests at violent protests against the pandemic restrictions. Germans
enjoyed their first taste of a return to normality after restaurants reopened in the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. France also took its first tentative steps out of a two-month lockdown.
From this morning its citizens will no longer need paperwork justifying journeys
of up to 60 miles. Trains and the Paris Metro will resume service at 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, while elementary schools will open along with some shops, markets, libraries and small museums. But beaches, from Brittany to the Mediterranean, will remain closed, along with restaurants, cafés and bars. Borders will stay shut until June 15.
Meanwhile a ‘super-spreader’ may have infected more than 7,000 people in South Korea. The 29-year-old man tested positive after spending time at five clubs and bars in the Itaewon neighbourhood of Seoul last weekend. South Korea recorded 34 infections yesterday, the most in a month and all tied to the nightclub outbreak. In Hong Kong, bars reopened on Friday and found themselves swamped, especially in the expat haunts of Peel Street.