Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) has assured that German borders with neighboring countries will remain open even if the corona situation worsens. “Yes, the borders will remain open,” he told Tagesspiegel before the start of the second lockdown on Monday. “In the spring we had enough experience of how we organize controls if they are necessary,” stressed Maas. “I am sure that we will not see traffic jams at the border that are tens of kilometers long.”
He also currently sees “no neighboring country that would carelessly help us to close the borders” and is in constant contact with his EU counterparts. “In particular, we keep each other up to date on which decisions we have to make that affect others, such as travel warnings.”
The SPD politician recalled that travelers returning after the summer had contributed to the increase in infections: “We had to react to this and have declared many regions within the EU to be risk areas. As a result, the proportion of infections caused by returning tourists decreased significantly. “
During the crisis the situation in Germany was “tense”, but it was better than in some other countries. “What I saw in the way of reactions from abroad was more a mixture of admiration and the desire to do something similar,” said the Foreign Minister: “Anyone who compares our situation with that of other countries comes to the conclusion: Germany is so bad not there. ”Nevertheless, the new restrictions that will apply from Monday are necessary. “We are facing a hard winter,” said Maas.
According to a study, significantly more people will die with corona infections in the coming weeks than in the past few weeks. According to model calculations by a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, the number of deaths from Covid-19 in Germany is likely to increase to at least 500 to 800 per week by the beginning of November, said the head Viola Priesemann. The increase may be even greater, as more and more older people have been infected since the end of September.
On Saturday morning, the Robert Koch Institute again reported a maximum number of registered new corona infections: the health authorities recorded 19,059 new cases the day before. At the end of September, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) warned that there could be 19,200 new infections a day at Christmas – less than two months before Christmas, this value is almost reached.
Union faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU) does not rule out a further tightening of the corona protective measures. Although the plan is that there will be easing again before Christmas, he told the newspapers of the Funke media group, no one could guarantee that. “A lot will depend on whether everyone goes along,” he said. Then you would have a good chance of being able to do without further tightening. “But if people do their thing across the board, then we’ll have a problem,” said the politician.
The federal and state governments agreed on massive contact restrictions on Wednesday in order to stop the rapid spread of the corona virus. As of Monday, restaurants and leisure, cultural and sports facilities must close. The trade as well as schools and daycare centers should remain open.
