German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Monday, November 2 that the end of the year holidays, notably Christmas, would be reduced to limited family reunions, as new restrictions went into effect nationwide for a month.
Read also: "Four weeks of confinement will not be enough to spend Christmas as if nothing had happened"
"
It will be a Christmas under the conditions imposed by the coronavirus but it will not be a Christmas in loneliness (...), we must think about meetings of close family, perhaps with precautionary measures
", a assured the conservative leader at a press conference, warning that there would however be "
no major New Year's Eve parties
".
Faced with the strong resurgence of infections in Germany, all restaurants, bars, cafes but also all cultural and sports institutions had to close their doors on Monday for the next four weeks, causing caution and some dissatisfaction in the population.
Most Christmas markets, including the world famous Nuremberg one, have already been canceled in a country where the Christmas period is accompanied, throughout the month of December, by numerous festive gatherings between friends. , in business or in family.
Germany "
faces difficult months
", observed the Chancellor assimilating the pandemic to "
an event which occurs only once in a century
".
The epidemic, a "natural disaster"
Angela Merkel, whose management of the "
first wave
" of the epidemic in the spring had been rather welcomed by the Germans, urged the respect of the restrictions in order, according to her, to operate "
a turning point
" which will make it possible to spend a month of December "
bearable
".
"
It is in everyone's hands to make this month of November our common success, to reach a turning point
", she insisted while warning that "
the light at the end of the tunnel
" was "
still quite far away.
".
Germany recorded more than 12,000 new infections in 24 hours, according to figures from the Robert-Koch health watch institute on Monday, which may however be truncated due to the weekend and the closure of some registration centers .
Recognizing that these measures were "
hard
", Angela Merkel reaffirmed the need to drastically reduce social contact.
“
It means giving up a lot of the things that make life good,
” she agreed.
Faced with the discontent in particular of the sectors of gastronomy and culture very affected by the new measures, the Chancellor considered that it was "
not a political decision
" but "
in a certain way a natural disaster that we have to manage
”.
