The system of restrictions to slow the spread of a new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in Germany was relaxed on Monday, despite an increase in the number of new infections again.
Under an agreement reached in February between the federal and provincial governments, hairdressers opened nationwide after a two-and-a-half-month forced break.
Management of several provinces also allowed for further relaxations. In Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, for example, the local legislative elections on 14 March were open to garden stores and horticulturalists. In Rhineland-Palatinate, guests can also be welcomed again in the foot salons, and Prime Minister Malu Dreyer has announced that the terraces and gardens of the restaurants will be open as early as March.
In Bavaria, in addition to reopening nurseries, horticulture and garden stores, a whole range of services that can be performed with direct physical contact are also allowed, so that not only hairdressers but also beauticians and manicurists can work again. In the province of Saxony-Anhalt, driving schools can also continue from Monday.
The Berlin leadership and the provincial governments agreed on 10 February to partially relax the restrictions starting on 1 March. In the meantime, epidemiological indicators have started to deteriorate again, with SARS-CoV-2 spreading again at an accelerating rate, mainly due to the emergence of mutations more contagious than the original virus.
However, all surveys show that the population is tired of the national restrictions imposed in November and in mid-December to freeze most areas of social and economic life, and that several sectors have been hit by a crisis threatening bankruptcy.
Thus, the question of how to alleviate the short circuit in the midst of a new, third wave of infection has come to the forefront of the public policy debate on epidemiological control.
The heads of the federal and provincial governments will discuss again on Wednesday, March 3, the shaping of the defense system. Based on the professional suggestions presented in the German press, decision-makers can try to meet the societal expectation of loosening restrictions, which is growing despite the deteriorating epidemic, above all by redesigning the vaccination plan, accelerating the vaccination campaign and using so-called antigen rapid tests.
According to a report by the Robert Koch Institute of Public Health (RKI) on Monday, 4,732 infections have been screened nationwide in the past 24 hours. This is an increase from 4,369 a week earlier.
The so-called seven-day infection rate – the number of new infections per hundred thousand inhabitants registered in the previous seven days – rose to 65.8 from 63.8 a day earlier and 61 a week earlier. The main goal of control is to keep this value below 35 permanently, because this is the only way for local health agencies to detect and break the chains of infection to regain control of the spread of the virus.
Together with the newly registered infections, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in 2,447,068 people. In connection with the disease caused by the virus (Covid-19), 60 deaths were registered in one day, bringing the number of victims of the epidemic to 70,105 in Germany.
(MTI)
