All over Germany, people have been infected with new variants of the Coronavirus. Next week, the government will release data that are supposed to show how bad the situation actually is by now.
Berlin, February 4th, 2021 (The Berlin Spectator) — When Berlin is forced to put an entire hospital into quarantine, there is a serious problem. The same applies when Coronavirus mutations appear in the middle of nowhere, including the Altmark region in Saxony-Anhalt, Vogtland county in Saxony or around Germersheim in Rhineland-Palatinate.
‘Far More Aggressive’
Earlier this week, Cologne reported 114 confirmed cases of a Corona variant known as B.1.1.7.. It is also being referred to as the “British Coronavirus” because it spread there first. When it hit the United Kingdom, the infection numbers suddenly skyrocketed. Cologne also has 52 cases of the South African B.1.351 mutation. And these are only the cases the local health authorities know of.
The German government is worried, and rightly so. On Tuesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel was interviewed by the ARD TV and radio network. She is not the kind of person who would want to scare people for no reason. But in the show ‘Farbe bekennen’, she felt the need to talk about the mutations from Britain and South Africa. These “far more aggressive” variants were the only risk right now, she stated. They could spike Germany’s guns.
The Right Decision
Right now, Germany’s plan is to get out of the pandemic by vaccinating as many people as possible. By the end of the summer, all adults in Germany will be offered a vaccination, Mrs. Merkel promised. The government is hoping most citizens and other residents will accept. According to the Chancellor’s spokesman Steffen Seibert, an overview on the spread of those dangerous Corona mutants will be presented early next week.
Next Wednesday, Mrs. Merkel and the First Ministers from Germany’s sixteen federal states are scheduled to discuss the Corona situation and its implications for the millionth time. They will have to decide whether the ongoing lockdown will be ended, eased, kept or tightened. In order to take the right decision, they will need to know what the situation is with B.1.17 and B.1.351.
This morning, the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin released its latest numbers. According to those, 14,211 new Coronavirus infections were registered in Germany in the past 24 hours. Since yesterday, 786 more Corona patients died. Tomorrow, the total number of related deaths will most likely exceed the 60,000 mark.
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