By dpa correspondents
Berlin (dpa) – Germany’s Bundesrat passed new legislation that ruled out wide-scale school or business closures but requires the public to be vaccinated, recovered or recently tested negative from Covid-19 to go to work or use public transport and tightens rules on visiting care homes.
The southern state of Bavaria and eastern state of Saxony cancelled their Christmas markets and announced semi-lockdowns to tackle rising case numbers.
Bavaria also ordered the closure of clubs and bars. State Premier Markus Soeder said the closures would last for an initial period of three weeks.
Soeder also issued a call for compulsory vaccination for all. “I believe that in the end we will not get around a general vaccination obligation,” he said in Munich. “Otherwise we’ll never get out of this endless loop with this awful coronavirus.”
Saxony’s state government said on Friday evening that, apart from libraries, cultural and leisure facilities will have to close. Bars, clubs and discos will remain closed.
Hesse, Hamburg and Saarland meanwhile announced tightened up measures, including some restrictions on unvaccinated people.
The western state of Hesse said starting in the middle of next week, only vaccinated and recovered people are to be granted access to indoor areas in restaurants, sports facilities or cultural institutions when new protective regulations come into force.
The state also plans to tighten up mask-wearing requirements.
In the northern city of Hamburg, rules come into force on Saturday that exclude unvaccinated people from bars, clubs, indoor sports and much of non-essential public life.
Similar rules apply from Saturday in the state of Saarland in the country’s west. The state is also imposing stricter measures for outdoor events, with Christmas market organizers allowed to choose whether to require masks or only allow visitors who are vaccinated, recovered or have a negative test result.
German health officials on Friday urged residents to avoid all non-essential contact.
“This is a national emergency,” Lothar Wieler, the head of the German disease control body, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said in Berlin. He called for people to stay at home as much as possible and for poorly ventilated cafes to close.
Hospitals were full in many regions and increasing vaccination rates were insufficient to contain the pandemic, Wieler said, as a campaign to administer booster shots to the vulnerable gathered pace. The overall rate for those fully vaccinated remained static at around 68 per cent.
“All of Germany is one big outbreak. We have to hit the emergency brakes,” the RKI head said, while drawing back from calling for a full lockdown.
Health Minister Jens Spahn appeared to be hinting at a lockdown when he made a call for “a joint national effort” and warned that vaccination alone would be unable to break the wave.
The RKI declared Belgium and parts of the Netherlands to be high-risk regions. Greece and Ireland are also rated high-risk. Unvaccinated travellers returning from high-risk regions must quarantine.
In Germany, the RKI advised all those planning to visit a care home to take a coronavirus test, even if they have been vaccinated, with the aim of protecting the vulnerable.
Terming the situation “alarming,” the RKI called on everyone to “avoid large events and close-contact situations, for example dances and clubs, as a matter of urgency.”
It issued a warning that hospital intensive care units were on the brink of being overwhelmed. Those showing any symptoms connected to the virus were “urgently advised” to stay at home and to take a test.
Spahn said he expected the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to issue a licence for coronavirus vaccines for children aged from 5 to 11 at the end of next week amid concerns that primary schools are helping to drive rising infection rates, even though children seldom suffer serious effects from Covid-19.
To date, vaccines have only been licensed for those aged 12 and older.
The newly passed national measures will be reviewed in three weeks. Oopponents of the package were concerned in particular that regional state power to close schools, childcare and businesses was removed.
Under the national rules, companies are now obliged to allow home-working where possible and harsher punishments for falsified vaccine certificates will come into force.
Early on Friday morning, the RKI put the seven-day incidence rate of new infections per 100,000 residents at 340.7, up from 263.7 a week ago and 75.1 a month ago.
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