German towns BRING BACK lockdown measures after seeing rise in coronavirus infections within days of lifting them
- Local authorities postponed lifting lockdown measure after a spike in virus cases
- States will reimpose lockdown if new cases his 50 per 100,000 over seven days
- Three different regions in Germany have seen new cases surpass that threshold
- Towns have postponed reopening restaurants, tourist spots and fitness studios
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Local authorities in Germany are bringing back lockdown measures after coronavirus infections spike just days after Angela Merkel eased them.
Germany has 16 federal states, with the power to relax restrictions, who have all agreed to reimpose lockdown if new cases hit 50 per 100,000 people over seven days.
The regional government in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populated state, said there had been a spike in coronavirus cases after 150 of 1,200 employees tested positive at a slaughterhouse in Coesfeld.
Pictured: the slaughterhouse in Coesfeld that saw 150 out of 1,200 employees test positive for the virus
As a result the regional government has decided to postpone reopening restaurants, tourist spots, fitness studios and larger shops which was supposed to happen on May 11.
Reopening schools and daycare centres is set to go ahead as planned.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s health minister Karl-Josef Laumann said the barrier had been breached in Coesfeld, where the slaughterhouse cluster pushed the infection rate up to ’61 per 100,000 residents’.
He ordered the temporary closure of the slaughterhouse and said employees at all of the state’s meat processing plants would be tested.
Minister for Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia Ursula Heinen-Esser (pictured left) reimposed lockdown restrictions in Coesfeld (entrance sign pictured right) after a spike in coronavirus infections
A slaughterhouse in the northern state Schleswig-Holstein also saw a rise in employees testing positive for the virus taking the district’s infection rate over the threshold.
In the eastern state of Thuringia, the local government recorded more than 80 infections per 100,000 people over the past week.
The majority of these infections were among employees and residents in six care homes and one geriatrics hospital.
Martina Schweinsburg, the chief administrator of Thuringia’s Greiz, said: ‘To be clear: we’re not going to put the entire district in quarantine, just two small towns were particularly affected.’
Angela Merkel started to ease Germany’s lockdown measures on Wednesday after she said the country had defeated ‘the first phase of the pandemic’ with its slowing infection rate and a low mortality rate.
Germany has 169,430 confirmed cases and 7,392 deaths.