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German states lifting lockdowns too quickly, warns Angela Merkel EU leaders in Covid-19 talks as Merkel issues lockdown exit warning
(about 2 hours later)
Scientists say country could ‘gamble away’ Covid-19 successes and trigger new wave Countries discuss Europe-wide recovery fund while German chancellor urges caution
Germany risks damaging its recent achievements in subduing the spread of Covid-19, Angela Merkel has warned, admonishing regional leaders and party representatives for trying to rush their way out of lockdown restrictions. Angela Merkel has said the coronavirus pandemic is “still at the beginning”, warning that the country risked rushing its exit from lockdown as divided EU leaders met in a crunch video-conference to agree a desperately needed Europe-wide recovery fund.
Some smaller, non-essential stores reopened their doors in Germany this week as state authorities started to ease physical distancing measures introduced a month ago. Worried that Germans were relaxing physical distancing efforts amid the reopening of smaller shops this week, the chancellor said Germany’s 16 states were moving too fast and the country remained “on the thinnest ice” despite its its early achievements.
The country’s decentralised political system has allowed some of the 16 federal states to surge ahead with special exemptions for local businesses, such as North Rhine-Westphalia allowing the opening of larger furniture stores. Germany has the fifth-highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world, but, mainly through early and extensive testing, has managed to keep its death toll down to just over 5,000, a far lower tally than many other countries.
“The implementation [of the exit strategy] gives me cause for concern,” Merkel said on Thursday while addressing parliamentarians in the Bundestag. “In parts it comes across as brisk, not to say too brisk. “It is precisely because the figures give rise to hope that I feel obliged to say that this interim result is fragile,” Merkel told parliament. “We are still far from out of the woods. We are not in the final phase of the pandemic, but still at the beginning.”
“No one likes to hear it, but we are not in the end phase of this pandemic, but at the beginning,” the German chancellor said. “We will continue to have to live with it for a long time.” Christian Drosten, the director of the Institute for Virology at Berlin’s Charité hospital, warned that reopening shopping malls and larger stores could trigger a second wave in May and June, saying the country risked “gambling away” its early advantage.
Merkel described the pandemic as “an imposition on our democracy, because it restricts precisely the things that make up our existential rights and needs”. Nonetheless, she said, the continued distancing measures were necessary. With schools to reopen from 4 May and Merkel and state leaders due to meet again on 30 April to review how to proceed next, France said on Thursday that it hoped all retail outlets other than restaurants, bars and cafes could open from 11 May.
The chancellor’s handling of the crisis, while drawing praise across the world, has also been the subject of criticism in Germany, where liberal politicians accused the conservative politician of acting in a more executive role than anticipated in the country’s constitution. “We want all retailers to be able to open in the same way, out of fairness,” the finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said. Bars and restaurants were unlikely to reopen for business before mid-June “because they are places of mixing”, he added.
“In the handling of the corona epidemic, the chancellor is on the verge of unlawfully assuming a higher authority,” said Wolfgang Kubicki, of the pro-business Free Democratic party and the vice-president of the Bundestag. Retailers will need to adopt strict rules limiting the number of people in their shops at one time, Le Maire said, and the hardest-hit regions, such as eastern France and greater Paris, might have to wait longer. Restrictions will also remain on travelling between some regions and older people’s movements may also be restricted.
In sounding a warning about speeding up the exit strategy, however, Merkel has the support of a number of leading scientists in Germany. “After the lockdown, we will not live as we did before,” said the interior minister, Christophe Castaner. “Some regions are better off than others and we are working to adapt the post-lockdown to the realities of districts, communes and regions.”
Christian Drosten, the director of the Institute for Virology at Charité hospital in Berlin and a leading expert on coronaviruses, said in his daily podcast that reopening shopping centres and larger stores could trigger a second wave of the pandemic in May and June. Companies have been told they should encourage employees to continue working from home if they can to limit public transport, and France – which has suffered the world’s fourth highest death toll at more than 20,000 – aims to raise its testing programme to about 500,000 a week.
Unlike the initial outbreak, such a second wave could have several starting points and would be more difficult to trace and contain. As EU leaders prepared to haggle over a gargantuan rescue package that has reignited a bitter north-south divide between member states, Merkel also said Germany was ready to make “significantly higher” EU budget contributions to help the bloc cope with fallout from the pandemic
“With great regret I am noticing that we are in the process of completely gambling away the head start that we had,” Drosten said. She added, however, that calls from some EU countries for common debt with common liabilities were not the way to go. “That would be a very difficult process, cost time and wouldn’t even help anyone in the current situation, since we need rapid-fire instruments to tackle the crisis,” she said.
Virologist Melanie Brinkmann, of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, criticised the German government’s communication of its exit strategy. With the bloc standing on the brink of an economic slump unparalleled since the Great Depression of the 1930s, its 27 national leaders were set to debate a variety of trillion-euro proposals to resuscitate the EU’s €450m single market.
“A large part of the population has not realised the extent of the situation,” Brinkmann told Der Spiegel. “At the moment people see that some measures are being relaxed, conveying the impression that the entire lockdown will be lifted step by step and we can soon return to living as normal.” Some European commission officials have suggested a €2 trillion plan combining loans and grants and an agreement on the EU’s next seven year budget. Spain wants a €1.5tn programme of grants for the worst-hit countries, funded by “perpetual” (ie non-maturing) bonds, while France wants a special fund outside the EU budget.
“We are still at the beginning of the pandemic, many forget that,” Brinkmann said. But any big-spending plans are likely to face resistance from self-styled “frugal” member states, such as the Netherlands and Austria, who feel the EU has already taken big steps to stave off economic hardship, such as relaxing state aid rules and the European Central Bank’s €750bn bond-buying programme.
Leaders are also expected to endorse a €540bn rescue package agreed earlier by finance ministers. Part of that agreement gives countries the right to borrow from the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism. But Italy is reluctant to turn to the fund while Spain has said it doesn’t need to.
They should also sign off on guidance from Brussels on lifting the lockdown, with three criteria for judging how and when member states should end restrictions: real decline in the spread of the disease, health system capacity, and availability of testing and tracing systems to monitor future outbreaks.
In other developments:
Global infections passed 2.6m, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, with nearly 185,000 deaths.
The number of new coronavirus cases fell in Russia for a second day and remained below record levels for four days, raising hopes the disease may have reached a plateau.
Greece is extending coronavirus lockdown measures by a week to May 4, the government said.
Spain clarified that children 14 or under would be allowed out to walk and play in the streets for an hour a day from Sunday as long as they stay within a kilometre of their homes and are accompanied by an adult.
Vietnam eased social distancing measures, with experts pointing to a decisive response involving mass quarantines and expansive contact tracing for its success in recording just 268 cases and zero deaths.
China said it would give another $30m to the World Health Organization, days after Washington said it would freeze funding.