Tuesday, January 05, 2021
Country leaders are ready
Contacts are likely to be further restricted
From the early afternoon, the Prime Ministers of the federal states will talk to Chancellor Merkel about an extended lockdown to combat the corona pandemic. According to a report, this should be even sharper than before.
In view of the continued high number of infections, German citizens do not just have to be prepared for an extension of the lockdown. It should also be stricter, at least with regard to the contacts between people. According to a report by "Business Insider", the heads of government of the countries are ready to tighten the current contact restrictions. The country chiefs gave the green light for it on Tuesday morning at a preliminary meeting for the summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel ".
Accordingly, similar contact restrictions as in spring could apply until the end of January. In essence, that would mean that meetings would only be allowed with one person from another household. So far, meetings with another household with a total of five people are allowed, not counting children under 14 years of age.
At 2 p.m., the prime ministers want to connect with Merkel and other representatives of the federal government. The start of the federal-state round had been postponed by two hours from eleven o'clock due to differences on this point. According to information from ntv and RTL, the start was delayed by another hour. The background to this is the discussion about limiting the range of motion.
Debate about radius
According to "Business Insider", the prime ministers are ready for this in principle. However, many reservations were also expressed in the preliminary discussion: According to this, this should only apply in counties with more than 200 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in one week – and only as one of various measures. According to information from ntv and RTL, the majority of the country leaders reject the restriction to a range of motion from an incidence of 100 or more, which Merkel is said to have demanded.
Another central point of the consultations on Tuesday afternoon is likely to be the regulations for daycare centers and schools; a general school opening after the end of the holidays was not in sight before the meeting.
In addition, the start of corona vaccinations should be a topic at the crisis summit. In the past few days, due to the slow start, there had been a debate about the amount of vaccine ordered, among other things. The hard lockdown, which came into force in mid-December and includes the closure of large parts of retail stores and daycare centers and schools, is still in place until January 10th.
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