TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Germany and France announce new national lockdowns, saying they have lost control of the coronavirus

Germany and France announce new national lockdowns, saying they have lost control of the coronavirus

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron each announced month-long national lockdowns Wednesday, saying health authorities have lost control of skyrocketing new infections while hospitals fill rapidly.

The announcements came as governments across Europe struggle to contain a second wave of the virus in colder weather, even after the relative success of strict lockdown restrictions in the spring.

“We in Europe are all surprised by the propagation of the virus,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation.

“The virus is circulating in France at a speed that even the most pessimistic forecasts had not anticipated,” he said, adding that the number of infections had doubled in less than two weeks.

Germany has similarly witnessed a rapid deterioration of its virus response, after being praised in the first wave of the pandemic. The country’s contact-tracing program, paired with mandatory quarantines, had been held up as a model of how to contain outbreaks. Now German health authorities are unable to identify where 75 percent of new infections come from.

“We no longer have control of the spread of the virus,” Merkel said at a Berlin news conference, noting that the number of patients in the country’s intensive care units had doubled in the past 10 days.

“If the tempo of infections stays the same, we will reach the capacity of our health-care system within weeks,” she said. “That’s why it’s completely clear that we need to act and act now.”


German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives for a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin on Oct. 28.


Starting Friday in France and Monday in Germany, restaurants, cafes and bars will close. In France, Macron said, residents will be permitted to leave their homes only for essential work or medical reasons and will be required to present “attestation forms” when they do. Leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states also agreed to new restrictions on social contacts, limiting public gatherings to a maximum of two households, with a limit of 10 people.

Both Germany and France plan to keep schools open — a priority for many European countries in this second wave — and, unlike in the spring, nursing home visits will be allowed.

Countries across the continent have desperately sought to avoid the return of national lockdowns. Switzerland on Wednesday ordered clubs closed and added new mask requirements, hoping to head off the need for more comprehensive, economy-crippling measures.

But governments are finding that more targeted, piecemeal measures may not be sufficient. Appeals by both French and German leaders to reduce contacts in recent weeks failed to slow the growth of new cases.


A man walks through the streets of Lyon, France, on Wednesday.


France’s new lockdown was a necessary last resort in the face of troubling figures, Macron said. “I have decided that we must return to confinement,” he said. “The whole territory is concerned.”

France on Sunday reported a record 52,010 new confirmed coronavirus infections from the previous 24 hours. It has also seen a steep rise in hospitalizations. On Monday, for instance, French hospitals tracked more than 1,300 new covid-19 patients, the highest one-day total since early April, in the peak of the first wave.

Macron talked his nation through all the options — including “herd immunity,” which he said would result in at least 400,000 deaths, in a country with a population of roughly 67 million people, and which was therefore not acceptable.

“I do not believe in the opposition between health and the economy,” Macron said, defending his decision to impose a second lockdown. “For us, nothing is more important than human life.”

While Germany has greater ICU capacity than most countries in Europe and fewer daily cases than France, Spain and Britain, infections have been growing exponentially. Germany recorded 14,964 new cases Wednesday, doubling from just a week earlier.

Parties and gatherings in public and private spaces were “unacceptable,” Merkel said. Social sacrifices must be made to ensure that schools can remain open, she said.

German industry groups said a new lockdown would be a “death blow.” As Merkel and state leaders hashed out new measures over a video call, thousands of restaurant and bar owners marched to the Chancellery. A van pulled a coffin on a trailer with the words “Entertainment Sector” on the side.


The moon is seen beside the Reichstag building, the seat of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, before a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin on Oct. 28.


Germany said it will make an additional $12 billion available to compensate businesses affected by the closures.

The closures were a “very hard decision,” Health Minister Jens Spahn, who himself contracted the novel coronavirus last week, told German radio. But it was necessary, he said.

“If we wait until the intensive care units are full, it will be too late,” he said.

“We had predicted there would be this second wave, but we ourselves are surprised by the brutality of what’s been happening over the past 10 days,” Jean-François Delfraissy, an immunologist and the chair of the French government’s scientific advisory covid-19 response board, told France’s RTL radio on Monday.

Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×