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The public order office and the police are on patrol in the city center to check the mask requirement that has been in effect for a week.
Photo: Christoph Reichwein (crei) / imago images / Reichwein
In view of the continuing dramatic increase in the number of corona cases, there are first voices speculating about an extension of the corona measures that have just been imposed.
Union faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus does not want to guarantee that the partial shutdown will end by December.
"The plan is that we will loosen up in December. Nobody can guarantee that," Brinkhaus told the newspapers of the Funke media group on Saturday.
"But the fact is: Without doing something, we will certainly not have a good December. We have to fight."
It was only on Wednesday that the Prime Ministers of the federal states agreed with the Chancellor on far-reaching restrictions that are intended to shut down public life in Germany and stop the rapid spread of the virus.
Immediately there were fierce debates about the proportionality of the measures, by which certain economic sectors such as the gastronomy are particularly hard hit.
The measures should initially apply for a month.
Should it not succeed in this way to sustainably reduce the daily new infections and to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, there is a threat of an extension of the measures, or even further tightening up to curfews.
Brinkhaus does not want to rule out this instrument: "A lot will depend on whether everyone goes along with it. Then we have a good chance of being able to do without further tightening. But if people do their thing across the board, we will have a problem."
On Saturday, the Robert Koch Institute reported more than 19,000 new infections for the first time.
A figure that Chancellor Angela Merkel originally outlined as a worst-case scenario for the time around Christmas.
Is the patchwork of measures being phased out?
In addition, Brinkhaus called for a new federalism debate with a view to the Corona crisis: "A district is not a yardstick for solving national or European disasters - nor is a federal state. We should take a close look at the distribution of competencies between the federal and state governments in the light of coping with the pandemic If it is in the interests of the people to locate more responsibilities with the federal government, we should approach this task without blinkers. The federal system was adjusted in 1949, in 2020 we will be living in a different world. "
Since the first measures to combat the pandemic in March, there had been criticism of the sometimes strongly divergent regulations of the individual federal states, which were incomprehensible for many people.
In view of the very different infection rates from region to region, this has so far been adhered to.
Now the virus has spread across the board and the debate is getting new food.
Regardless of whether it is a patchwork or nationwide regulations, one thing is clear: The second wave and the associated restrictions will put a strain on the German economy.
The German Economic Institute (IW), which is close to the employer, has therefore criticized the federal government's lockdown course.
"The federal government lacks a long-term strategy," said IW director Michael Hüther to the newspapers of the Funke media group on Saturday.
"In the past six months there has been a failure to digitally upgrade and to come up with clear concepts."
Uncertainty is the greatest poison for the economy.
"The federal government has not succeeded in taking this uncertainty away," said Hüther.
Nobody knows whether there will be more lockdowns in December or spring.
Researchers expect the death toll to rise
The scientific director of the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research of the employee-related Hans Böckler Foundation, Sebastian Dullien, on the other hand, is satisfied with the course of the federal government so far.
Looking at economic growth in the third quarter of 8.2 percent, Dullien said: "The strong growth shows how effective a large-scale, quickly adopted economic policy can be. The policy of the federal government from the spring and early summer was crucial to the recovery in the third Quarter contributed. "
Among other things, it had lowered VAT by the end of the year in order to stimulate consumption.
It is not yet possible to estimate how devastating the increase in the number of cases will be in Germany.
When the number of new infections rose again in mid-August after a quiet summer, the number of corona deaths remained low - among other things, because younger people in particular became infected with the virus and the intensive medicine capacities for special corona treatment were plentiful.
In view of the spread of the virus in the area, researchers are now expecting an increase in corona-related deaths in Germany as well.
Model calculations showed that the number of deaths from Covid-19 in Germany is likely to increase to 500 to 800 per week as early as the beginning of November, said the head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Viola Priesemann.
The increase may be even greater.
The number of cases must be reduced - at all costs
The relatively low number of deaths to date is due to the fact that by the end of September mostly people under the age of 60 were infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus, explain the scientists working with Priesemann.
Since then, the number of reported infections has also increased among people over the age of 60.
With a delay of about two weeks, this also leads to an increase in deaths.
Scientists from numerous German research institutions took part in the study.
The team analyzed the increase in reported new infections by age group and determined how the number of deaths from Covid-19 was developing from the observed mortality in the respective age group.
"According to an extensive meta-study, the mortality rate from corona infection increases tenfold every 20 years of life and reaches around 10 percent around the age of 82," it said.
According to the scientists, the fact that more people over 60 have been infected with corona since the end of September is due to the fact that the health authorities can no longer consistently pursue and isolate the contact persons of those infected.
"In order to regain control of the infection process, the number of cases must be reduced immediately," write the researchers, according to a report in the "Deutsches Ärzteblatt", in which the study was published.
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mhe / dpa / Reuters