Germany remembers 80,000 Covid victims as infections continue to rise

GERMANY paid tribute yesterday to nearly 80,000 people who have died from the coronavirus, even as the country struggles to get a grip on another rise in infections.

President Frank-walter Steinmeier led a memorial event with other top officials at the Konzerthaus concert hall in Berlin. The event was also dedicated to the bereaved “who could not accompany their relatives when they died and for whom important and comforting rituals of mourning were not possible”.

Germany’s confirmed death toll from Covid-19 stood at 79,914 yesterday, an increase of 67 from Saturday. That is the fifth-highest total in Europe, after the UK, Italy, Russia and France.

Germany had a comparatively small number of deaths in the pandemic’s first phase, but saw much higher infection levels in the autumn and winter. In January, more than 1,000 deaths per day were reported at times in the country of 83 million people.

Infections have increased again over the past two months as a more contagious coronavirus variant first detected in Britain took hold. Germany has reported 3.14 million cases since the pandemic began.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to get a bill through parliament that would mandate an “emergency brake” in areas where there are more than 100 weekly new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The nationwide rate stood at 162 yesterday.

It would require the closure of shops, cultural and sports facilities, limits on personal contacts and night-time curfews. The idea is to end the patchwork of measures that has characterised the pandemic response across Germany’s 16 states.