Merkel warns that restrictions in Germany “are no longer enough”

The current evolution of the pandemic and the successive daily records of infections configure a health situation that aims to be “worse than everything we have seen so far,” Merkel also warned leaders of her party, the conservative CDU, as reported by the AFP news agency. Germany, especially the southern and eastern regions, is being hit by a new wave of infections, which experts and politicians attribute to one of the lowest vaccination rates (68%) in Western Europe. the outgoing chancellor and her likely successor, Olaf Scholz, already decided last week to tighten restrictions on unvaccinated people. Yesterday, the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg announced curfews for unvaccinated people in three of its districts, as the country faces its worst wave of infections since the start of the pandemic nearly two years ago. Residents of those districts who have not been vaccinated will not be allowed to leave their homes between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. unless they are authorized for work or emergency medical reasons, officials said. Coronavirus cases soared in Germany in recent weeks, after vaccination stabilised at around 67% of the population, in a resurgence – or “fourth wave” – that authorities have defined as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Last week, the country exceeded 60,000 infections in one day for the first time, with more than 65,000, days after having surpassed, also for the first time, the 50,000 in a single day. In many hospitals, beds for patients with coronavirus and other diseases are already becoming scarce, and Merkel warned of a “dramatic situation”. Faced with this situation, the presidents of the Länder of Germany agreed last Thursday with the central government to introduce restrictions on public life for people who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Original source in Spanish