April 5th local time, the chairman of the German CDU and Governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Raschert said that in view of the current situation of the third wave of the epidemic, a hard short-term blockade should be imposed in April.
Raschert made the above statement after inspecting the vaccination center in Aachen. In recent days, the occupancy rate of intensive care units in Germany has been increasing. As of April 5, more than 4,100 patients need treatment in intensive care units.
“If we don’t take the corresponding measures, that number will increase significantly,” Raschert warned. He called for new transitional lockdown measures to curb the rise of the third wave of the epidemic, so that it can be flattened first, and then maintain this level through more testing until the vaccination process is successfully completed.
He also canceled all relaxation measures in North Wales in areas such as catering and leisure, including pilot projects. This means that he adjusted his epidemic prevention strategy: in mid-March, he announced that the state would be tested and gradually opened up after the traditional holiday, which was criticized by German Chancellor Merkel.
Raschert also said he hoped to advance the new round of federal and state epidemic prevention summits originally scheduled for next Monday.
Previously, German Chancellor Merkel, German Health Minister Spann and some German federal governors had made it clear that Germany now needs faster and clearer decisions, and the federal government hopes to amend the federal epidemic prevention bill to ensure that the federal states implement unified national epidemic prevention measures.
