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Many shops have been closed since December 16
Photo: Tom Weller / dpa
The rules of the current shutdown in Germany should apply until January 10th - the federal and state governments announced in mid-December.
But there will likely not be any major easing on the second Monday of the New Year.
The »FAS« reports that the federal states have already agreed to extend the measures.
In particular, the federal states more affected by the coronavirus pandemic are therefore for a period up to January 31 - as is the federal government.
While the less severely affected federal states were considering reopening daycare centers and schools up to seventh grade, according to the FAS, the others wanted to keep them closed.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) called on the program "RTL Aktuell" to continue the shutdown.
The federal and state governments will discuss how to proceed on Tuesday.
Far from the goal
As a reminder: When the federal and state governments agreed on tougher measures on December 13, they also formulated a goal that the shutdown should achieve - to bring the number of reported infections per week back to a maximum of 50 per 100,000 inhabitants .
The daily status report of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from 13.12.
showed a seven-day incidence of 169 cases per 100,000 population.
According to the RKI, 395 of 412 circles were above the target of 50 per 100,000.
In the January 2 management report, 390 out of 412 circles are still above this seven-day incidence.
The national average is 140 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
The current figures can underestimate the actual situation, since fewer people may have visited a doctor's practice due to the holidays, fewer laboratory tests took place and the health authorities may not have transmitted all the data.
Germany is still a long way from achieving its target.
And what effect the easing over the Christmas days will have on the infection rate will only be seen in the coming days.
In the current management report, the RKI also writes that the R value is »around 1«.
This means that every person infected with Sars-CoV-2 infects a different person on average.
Containment can only succeed if the value falls below one, so that gradually fewer people are newly infected.
In December, researchers formulated a more ambitious target than the value of 50 new cases per week per 100,000 people: They set a target value of a maximum of ten new infections per million inhabitants per day (which corresponds to 7 cases per 100,000 per week) for the whole of Europe .
If the number of cases is only at a low level, clearly noticeable easing is possible.
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