High numbers of COVID-19 infections have moved German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron to announce that their respective nations will go immediately into lockdown.
In France, the lockdown begins tomorrow (Friday 30 October, local time), with Germany implementing lockdown from Monday 2 November, local time.
Germany recorded 14,964 new infections and 85 deaths in the 24-hour period to Wednesday 28 October 2020. The country’s schools and kindergartens will remain open but all bars, restaurants, cinemas, pools and gyms will be closed. Only essential travel will be permitted and hotels will not open to guests. Ms Merkel said the big concerns for her country are in the area of contact tracing, with health authorities unable to keep up with the surge in new cases, managing to trace the origins of infections in only around 25 per cent of new cases.
On Wednesday 28 October 2020, France recorded 36,437 new cases of COVID-19 and 244 deaths.
“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” President Macron said in a televised announcement.
“Like all our neighbours, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the virus.
“We are all in the same position — overrun by a second wave which we know will be harder, more deadly than the first.”
Schools in France will remain open, but residents will be permitted to leave home only to shop for essential goods, seek medical attention or during the allocated one-hour per day of exercise time.
IMAGE: Vista of Paris, taken from L’Oiseau Blanc at The Peninsula Paris/Photographer: Belinda Craigie
