On Berlin’s upscale Kurfuerstendamm boulevard, Berlin resident Noury Oeddin looked around at the empty streets and shuttered shops in disbelief as the lockdown measures announced Sunday were put into force. In addition to closing shops and moving children to remote learning for the few days before the Christmas holidays, private gatherings are being limited to two households with a maximum of five people, among other things. The measures slowed the weekly increase in new infections but didn’t bring them down, prompting officials to take more drastic measures. “It’s as if the virus wanted to remind us how important what we’re now doing is,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said of the surge in deaths being reported on the day new restrictions come into force.įaced with exponentially increasing cases in October, Germany implemented a “lockdown light” at the start of November, which closed bars and restaurants but left shops open. It brought the country’s overall pandemic death toll to 23,427. That was far greater than the previous daily record set Friday of 598 deaths, although it included two days of figures from the hard-hit eastern state of Saxony, which did not report Tuesday. It also blew past its previous daily death toll, with Germany’s 16 states reporting that 952 more people had died of the virus, the institute said. The country recorded 179.8 virus infections per 100,000 residents over the last seven days, a new high and significantly more than the 149 per 100,000 reported a week ago by the Robert Koch Institute, the country’s disease control center. BERLIN > Germany reported a record level of coronavirus deaths as it entered a harder lockdown today, closing shops and schools to try to bring down stubbornly high new daily infections.
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