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Pianist Igor Levit
Photo: Christoph Hardt / imago images / Future Image
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Ukraine has a record number of new infections
8:08 a.m.:
Ukraine has a record number of 6410 new corona infections.
The National Security Council announced that 109 patients had died in the past 24 hours.
This is also a maximum.
With 5,992 new infections, Ukraine had already reported a new record on Friday.
In total, the country has 293,641 confirmed infections and 5,517 deaths related to the pandemic.
Criticism of vacation despite Corona: King breaks off vacation
7.50 a.m.:
After harsh criticism, the Dutch royal family canceled a vacation trip to Greece that was undertaken despite the corona crisis.
"We see people's reactions to reports in the media. And they are violent and they touch us," said a statement from the royal family published late on Friday evening.
"We don't want to leave any doubt about it: in order to defeat Covid-19, it is necessary that the guidelines are followed."
Previously, members of the opposition and governing parties had criticized the plane trip of King Willem-Alexander and his family with a government plane to their holiday home on the Peloponnese peninsula, which only became known through media reports.
Stricter corona protective measures have just been ordered in the Netherlands.
Among other things, pubs and restaurants have to close for four weeks.
On Friday, the authorities reported that almost 8,000 new corona infections had been registered since Thursday morning;
that is a new "daily record".
For the area in Greece in which Willem-Alexander's holiday villa is located, no warning of an increased corona risk has yet been issued.
More than eight million infected people in the US
5:50 a.m.:
According to Reuters count, the number of infected people in the USA increases by at least 69,478 to 8.08 million.
At least 899 people have died after being infected.
A total of 218,633 people died from the virus.
Holocaust
survivors should receive additional corona aid
5 a.m.:
Holocaust survivors are said to receive more than half a billion euros in additional aid from the federal government in the corona crisis.
The Ministry of Finance had reached an agreement to this effect with the Claims Conference, a coalition of Jewish organizations, the Ministry said at the request of the German Press Agency.
According to this, around 240,000 victims of the Nazi regime worldwide can receive 2,400 euros over two years.
International media had previously reported.
"In times of the Covid-19 pandemic, Germany stands in a special way to its historical responsibility for the people persecuted by the Nazi injustice regime," declared the ministry.
The federal government is also aware that the immeasurable suffering inflicted on the survivors cannot be offset by money.
The Bundestag still has to approve the plans.
Survivors of the German concentration and extermination camps under National Socialism often belong to the corona risk group - on the one hand because of their age, but also because they often have health problems during their time in the camps.
The pandemic hits them particularly hard, said the Ministry of Finance.
Star pianist Levit does not want to give house concerts if there is another lockdown
03.32 a.m.:
In the event of another lockdown,
star pianist
Igor Levit does not want to repeat his "Corona house concerts" broadcast online.
"The house concerts were my salvation, my anchor of stability," Levit told Focus magazine in an interview published on Saturday about his online appearances during the Corona restrictions in spring.
"Without her I would never have got through this difficult time, physically and mentally."
In the event of a new lockdown, however, he does not want to be present on the network in the same way.
Levit received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany at the beginning of October.
This highlighted his commitment to anti-Semitism and the exclusion of minorities, as well as the "Corona house concerts" that he organized.
Merz
calls on Prime Minister to support the Chancellor
1:31 a.m.:
The applicant for the CDU party chairmanship, Friedrich Merz, has called on the minister-presidents of the states in the corona pandemic to support the Federal Chancellor.
"Right now it would be desirable that the prime ministers of our country - despite the justified criticism of, for example, the ban on accommodation - would stand behind the Chancellor without ifs and buts and support her efforts to save the country from a second lockdown," said Merz of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung" (Saturday edition).
Another lockdown would mean "a considerable worsening of the economic situation", with a further increase in bankruptcies and a massive slump in the labor market, "said Merz." We must urgently prevent that.
He called on the grand coalition in Berlin not to burden the economy with new regulations now.
"Adhering to a stress moratorium would be an important psychological signal to companies so that they can rely on the fact that it is now simply a matter of getting out of the crisis together," said the CDU applicant.
One must now concentrate on solving the big problems.
The federal government wants
to mobilize
additional
helpers for corona follow-up
12:40 a.m.:
In view of the sharp rise in the number of new corona infections, the federal government is trying to recruit additional helpers to support the municipalities in tracking infection chains.
"The need is enormous, a five-digit number of helpers is needed," said Chancellery Minister Helge Braun (CDU) of the "Rheinische Post" (Saturday).
In addition to the Bundeswehr contingent of up to 15,000 soldiers, they are also looking "whether we can mobilize further personnel reserves in the federal government and subordinate authorities," said the CDU politician.
He also hoped to attract a larger number of students to follow up on contacts.
The government is in talks with the university rectors' conference so that the volunteers do not have any disadvantages in their studies.
From Braun's point of view, the corona warning app has proven itself against the background of the dynamic pandemic development.
"The warnings are currently increasing dramatically, we are seeing a steep increase," said the head of the Chancellery.
By Tuesday, 10,860 users who tested positive could have sent a warning to their anonymous contacts via the app.
The app has now been downloaded around 19.6 million times.
Experts assume that the application is actively used by around 16 million people in Germany.
Braun renewed the proposal he made in the summer to hold a state act for the corona victims "when the corona pandemic is essentially defeated".
The message that was spread in the summer that Germany will get through the crisis well should have been perceived by relatives who lost someone to the virus as extremely cynical.
"I tell you that the victims of this pandemic will not be forgotten under any circumstances," underlined Braun.
Icon: The mirror
nil / dpa / afp / Reuters
