‘Too little, too late:’ Germany’s Easter lockdown comes under fire

Berlin (dpa) – The German government’s decision to extend its coronavirus lockdown until April 18 and tighten measures over Easter came under fire from the opposition and industry on Tuesday, with many arguing the steps will not break a third wave of infections.

The Easter shutdown, which starts April 1, is “too little, too late” in stopping an exponential rise in new cases, said Janosch Dahmen, a lawmaker and health expert for the environmentalist Greens.

“In the period from today until Easter, many more people will be infected,” he said. “Comprehensive rapid tests, accelerated vaccination and consistent, digital contact-tracing are urgently required in order to finally be able to use smarter methods than shutdown.”

Dietmar Bartsch, the parliamentary group leader of the hard-left Die Linke party, said the government has “screwed up” its coronavirus containment strategy.

“The Easter lockdown is essentially a because-the-federal-government-screwed-it-up-lockdown,” Bartsch said on Twitter.

Economists and industry associations also criticized the government’s strategy.

The Easter lockdown showed that “the opening strategy of the last few weeks has failed,” Clemens Fuest of the Ifo economic research institute told the Handelsblatt business daily, referring to steps to allow soe businesses to reopening from the beginning of March.

The German Economic Institute (IW) that closing down all economic activity over the Easter weekend would wipe 7 billion euros (8.3 billion dollars) from the German economy.

The comments come just hours after Chancellor Angela Merkel and the head of Germany’s 16 states hammered out an agreement to extend the current lockdown and to toughen existing measures for a five-day period, during talks that stretched from Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning.

Public and private life are to come to a virtual standstill during the long Easter holiday weekend, from April 1 through 5. Shops are to remain closed throughout, except for grocery stores and supermarkets which will be allowed to be open on Saturday, April 3.

Public gatherings are also banned during that time, but Covid-19 testing and vaccination centres will remain open.

Religious Easter services are to be conducted largely virtually, and private gatherings limited to five people from two households, not counting children up to the age of 14.

Markus Soeder, the powerful premier of the southern state of Bavaria, criticized the way the talks had been conducted.

“Talks that last 15 hours – during which the essential decisions are made between 1 and 3 o’clock in the morning – carry the risk of leaving details unclarified and communication becomes more difficult, especially when it comes to sensitive questions,” he said.

Others were more positive about the government’s strategy.

The decision to tighten coronavirus lockdown measures for a five-day period during the Easter holidays “could have a very positive effect,” Dirk Brockmann of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) disease control body told Deutschlandfunk radio.

If left unchecked, Germany’s current increase in infections – “with the number of cases doubling every two weeks” – would result in about 60,000 new infections every day after Easter, he said.

According to RKI data on Tuesday, 7,485 new infections were reported within 24 hours, taking the seven-day incidence figure of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants to 108.1. It stood at 107.3 the day before.