“Every day counts here”: Merkel urges more contact restrictions

“Every day counts here”
Merkel is pushing for more contact restrictions

In the fight against the fourth wave, stricter corona measures would have to come. This is underlined by the outgoing Chancellor Merkel. “We need more restrictions on contacts,” she says and would like to support Scholz in setting up the crisis team.

In view of the further worsening of the corona situation, Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging additional measures. “Every day counts here,” said Merkel at a press conference after a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. “We need more restrictions on contacts,” she said, referring to regulations adopted in other countries to prevent contacts.

After her meeting with the Polish Prime Minister, Chancellor Merkel called for stricter corona rules to be introduced.

(Photo: picture alliance / dpa / AFP Pool)

She also spoke to her likely successor, the current Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on this matter today. The aim was to jointly initiate the necessary steps in the current transition phase. At the presentation of the traffic light coalition agreement on Wednesday, Scholz announced that he wanted to set up a federal-state crisis team for the corona pandemic in the Chancellery. Scholz had indicated that this could be initiated before he took over government.

The outgoing Chancellor has declared her willingness to jointly set up the announced Corona crisis team now. She offered this to Scholz today, said Merkel. She is happy that she is “in close contact with Olaf Scholz” for this purpose. “This is of course a very sad day on which we have to mourn 100,000 victims of Corona,” she added. Unfortunately, they are still in a phase of exponential growth in the number of infections and know that the number of intensive care patients will continue to rise. Today there will also be a preparatory meeting for the Prime Minister’s Conference (MPK) on December 9th. She could not say whether the MPK would be brought forward.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced in the morning that another 351 people had died in Germany after a corona infection in the past 24 hours. The total number of deaths exceeded the value of 100,000. The current, nationwide seven-day incidence reached a further record at 419.7; in Saxony, the incidence value rose to more than 1000 for the first time in a federal state.

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