German Federal Minister for Economy and Energy Peter Altmaier warned that if the rate of coronavirus infection is not effectively controlled, Germany’s “partial lockdown” may be extended until early next spring.
The German newspaper Le Monde published an interview with Altmeier on the 28th. He said that if most of Germany’s new confirmed cases per 100,000 people in seven days cannot be reduced to less than 50, the government will not relax epidemic prevention restrictions.
“We have three or four long winter months left,” Altmeier said. “The restrictions may continue into the first few months of 2021.”
Due to the rebound of the epidemic, Germany began a “partial lockdown” for four weeks on the 2nd of this month, not as strict as the first round of “lockdown” in the first half of the year. After the partial lockdown, the number of new confirmed cases in Germany has not decreased significantly in a single day.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the governors on the 25th to discuss the domestic epidemic, and then announced that the epidemic prevention measures would be further tightened and the “lockdown” was extended until December 20.
After the meeting, she told media reporters that the “partial lockdown” measures will be extended to December 20 first. Given the high infection rate, the restrictions may be extended until early January next year.
According to the epidemic data released by the German disease control agency Robert Koch Institute on the 28th, 21,695 new confirmed cases were confirmed in Germany that day, with a total of more than 1.028 million confirmed cases.
