Germany has too many loopholes in its coronavirus blocking rules, the head of the country’s disease control agency said, while figures released Thursday show the highest number of daily deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The Robert Koch Institute said 1,244 deaths were confirmed by COVID-19 in one day through Thursday, bringing the total to 43,881. There were also 25,164 recently confirmed cases, bringing the known infections in Germany close to 2 million.
Lothar Wieler, president of the institute, said the data indicate that people in Germany travel more than during the first phase of the pandemic in the spring, contributing to the spread of the virus.
German authorities have imposed restrictions on social contacts, largely closed schools and limited travel for those in areas with high infection rates, but the rules do not apply uniformly to the country’s 16 states.
“For me, these steps we are taking now are not a complete blockade,” Wieler said. “There are still too many exceptions and they are not being implemented strictly.”
Officials are considering tougher restrictions to curb the continued rise in infections.
The 7-day average of new daily cases has increased in the last two weeks, from 23.36 per 100,000 people on December 30 to 26.03 per 100,000 people on January 13.
Wieler pointed to the sharp rise in infections recently observed in Ireland as an example of how quickly the outbreak can increase again if the rules are relaxed, especially given the seemingly more contagious new variant of the virus circulating there and the neighboring Britain.
All infections with variants confirmed so far in Germany involved people who had traveled abroad, Wieler said.
“We have to be very careful, especially with the British mutation of this virus,” Ralph Brinkhaus, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s bloc, told n-tv. “So we still don’t know what more measures will be needed in the coming weeks.”
To alleviate the tension of working families who have to care for school-age children and deter them from using emergency centers, Parliament on Thursday passed a bill doubling the amount of parental leave paid to 40 days for 2021. Public health insurance will pay up to 112.88 euros ($ 137) daily to parents if they stay home to care for children under 12 who could not go to school due to the pandemic .
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