Before Easter, in Europe, not only France tightened the Epidemic prevention measures, many places in Germany also plan to further tighten the lockdown measures, rather than gradually relax, and many German states have imposed curfews.
Hamburg has initiated an “emergency brake”, Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher announced that since Friday, April 2, Hamburg residents should stay Home from 9 pm to 5 am. Only work-related outings or emergencies can be considered as exceptions.
Supermarkets, on the other hand, must close by 9 p.m. People are also prohibited from picking up their own Food from restaurants at night, but delivery services are allowed to continue working as normal.
In addition, people can still walk, jog, etc. near their homes, but only if they are “alone. This “draconian measure” is inevitable, said Schencher.
The German state of Brandenburg has also tightened its restrictions, imposing a curfew again during the Easter holiday and not allowing residents to go out between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Bavaria, for its part, has announced that towns with more than 100 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in a seven-day period must impose a curfew. The list of affected towns is particularly long, and people who want to go out must check online daily to see if their place of residence is on the curfew list. The curfew also runs from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next day.
Lower Saxony has also adopted a nighttime curfew, and residents of areas with a seven-day infection rate of more than 150 are not allowed to leave their place of residence between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.
In addition, curfews have also been announced in Hanover, Bavaria, Maezen, Saxony, Saan, Leafa, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Hesse, with only slight differences in the conditions (infection rate thresholds) and times of curfew implementation.
So far, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Saarland and Thuringia have not declared curfews. Saarland’s governor Tobias Hans also made it clear to the media that he did not think the curfew would work at all.
In Bremen, the curfew is only in effect in Bremerhaven. The mayor of Bremen, Andreas Bovenschulte, criticized the curfew as being overrated, as the principle of proportionality requires that all milder measures to combat the pandemic be exhausted first and foremost, and that the curfew be a “last resort”.
Andreas Gassen, chairman of the board of directors of the National Association of Statutory health Insurance Physicians (KBV), also does not believe curfews are effective. He said, “Curfews or travel bans are not really effective, and we should lift these draconian measures as soon as possible.”
Last weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminded the federal states to implement the agreed “emergency brake” against the epidemic, meaning that states that have already implemented relaxed policies should also be ready to tighten their embargoes again. Merkel said the federal government will intervene if the federal states fail to take the necessary measures.
According to data released by Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on April 1, 24,300 new infections were reported in Germany in a 24-hour period, an increase of 1,600 cases from the previous week. The national infection rate increased slightly to 134.2 (per 100,000 people). The transmission rate of the highly infectious UK mutant virus is now close to 90%.
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