"The situation is very, very serious and complicated", declared the head of government of Bavaria, Markus Söder, to justify the cancellation, this Friday, November 19, of all the Christmas markets in his region, one of the most affected. in Germany by the new wave of Covid-19.
He also clarified that bars and nightclubs will also be closed in places with particularly high infection rates.
Bad news for the city of Nuremberg, in northern Bavaria, which had until then decided to maintain its world-famous Christmas market.
"We are sorry," said the Bavarian head of government, justifying the decision by the multiple contacts between people in these markets and the inability to effectively control the health status of visitors.
Last Tuesday, the mayor of Munich, capital of the region, had anticipated this announcement, decreeing the cancellation of the city's Christmas market, was to open on November 22 and which attracts more than two million visitors each year. .
"This is bitter news, but the dramatic situation in our hospitals and the exponential growth in the number of infections leave me no other choice," said the elected official in a press release.
Law of "2G"
Unvaccinated Bavarians will also be subject to a “de facto lockdown,” Söder added. Particularly affected by this new wave, Bavaria recorded an incidence rate of more than 500 over seven days, behind two other regional states, Saxony and Thuringia, even more heavily affected. The whole region will therefore apply the law of "2G", which allows only vaccinated ("geimpft") and cured ("genesene") to access public places such as restaurants, cinema, concert hall or sporting events. . The non-vaccinated will also be forced to limit their contacts to 5 people from two outbreaks, he continued. Finally, in districts where the incidence exceeds 1,000 new cases of infections per 100,000 inhabitants over 7 days, “everything must be closed”,with the exception of schools and shops.
These announcements come the day after a crisis meeting between outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of regions, who have decided to ban access to public places to unvaccinated people as soon as the hospitalization threshold exceeds three patients. of Covid per 100,000 inhabitants, which is the case in twelve of the country's sixteen regional states.
In 24 hours, Germany recorded 52,970 new infections and 201 deaths.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has hinted that the country could follow Austria by announcing full containment, to stem the fifth wave of Covid.
“We are now in a situation where we cannot rule anything out,” he said.
"In the current situation, this is no longer enough," said Lothar Wieler, the president of the Robert Koch health watch institute on Friday, expressing doubts about the effectiveness of the measures.
