Seven-day incidence over 100: Hamburg pulls the Corona emergency brake

Seven-day incidence over 100
Hamburg pulls the Corona emergency brake

In view of the increasing number of cases with coronavirus infections, Hamburg is sticking to the rules – and pulling the emergency brake. The city-state is thus returning to the lockdown of the past few months.

After three days with seven-day incidences over 100, Hamburg pulled the Corona emergency brake. This means that the opening steps that were carried out at the beginning of last week will be reversed from Saturday, said Mayor Peter Tschentscher. "I fear that the situation will continue to deteriorate. We are in a strong third wave," said Tschentscher.

As of Friday, the incidence had risen to 108.6 cases per 100,000 population. The incidence was already over 100 on Wednesday and Thursday. From Saturday, the rules from before March 8th will apply again. In the retail sector, instead of "Click & Meet", only "Click & Collect" would be possible. Private contacts would again have to be limited to one person outside of their own household, but this time children up to 14 years of age would not be included.

Even outdoor sports would only be possible for adults under these contact restrictions. The schools and day-care centers that were only partially reopened at the beginning of the week after the end of the holidays would not be affected by the emergency brake. Sports in groups in the open air should also generally continue to be possible for children, as State Councilor for Sports Christoph Holstein wrote on Facebook on Thursday. The permitted group size must be reduced from 20 to 10 children.

Recently there had been discussions about the corona emergency brake because it was interpreted differently in individual federal states. For example, Brandenburg had raised the decisive limit for the seven-day incidence from 100 to 200, while Hesse and Bavaria announced that they would not undertake any further easing. The Prime Minister of the Free State, Markus Söder, spoke out in favor of turning the "currently very flexible emergency brake into a hard emergency brake." On Monday, the prime ministers of the federal states want to meet again with Chancellor Angela Merkel and discuss how to proceed.

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