Merkel suggests hard shutdown could last beyond January

People queue outside a discount apparel store at Berlin's Alexanderplatz shopping district ahead of a partial lockdown

Credit: JOHN MACDOUGALL /AFP

Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Germany faces a new peak of Covid-19 infections next month, raising doubts that the country’s hard lockdown from Wednesday will end in early January as initially planned.

January and February are set to be particularly tough pandemic months, Merkel told lawmakers of her CDU-led conservative bloc in parliament on Tuesday, according to a participant in the virtual meeting. The country was heading toward an incidence rate of 200 cases per 100,000 people over seven days, she said.

Germany will from Wednesday shutter non-essential stores, urge employers to close workplaces and encourage parents to keep children away from school in a nationwide lockdown agreed on by Merkel and the 16 regional state leaders on Sunday.

The stricter curbs were meant to last until Jan. 10, but the chancellor’s comments on Tuesday raise the likelihood that they will be extended at Merkel’s next meeting with the state leaders in early January. German law requires the government to reassess a nationwide lockdown every four weeks.

Coronavirus Germany Spotlight Chart — deaths default

Germany’s daily coronavirus cases and deaths hit new peaks last week and Merkel warned that the country is experiencing another phase of exponential growth. More than 22,000 have died from the disease, which has infected a total of 1.36 million people in the country.

The country’s seven-day incidence rate has risen sharply in the past few weeks and currently is at a near-record of 174 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the RKI public health institute. Officials have said the seven-day incidence rate needs to come down to 50 per 100,000 and stay there.

For the German government, it is impossible to develop a long-term strategy against the pandemic, because there are still too many unknowns about the disease, Merkel told her caucus on Tuesday. She appealed to state leaders not to make any exceptions from the lockdown rules, as she warned that this would risk extending the restrictions even further.

Merkel said it is too early to tell when the pandemic will be over, in remarks that are set to dampen the growing optimism that the expected European approval of a Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE next week might quickly lower the number of new infections.