More than 100,000 people have died of covid-19 in Germany since the start of the pandemic and a new daily record of infections: the country faces the most violent wave of the disease, the main challenge for the new government that will take power.
In the past 24 hours, the country has recorded 351 deaths, bringing the death toll since the start of the coronavirus pandemic to 100,119, announced the federal government’s Robert Koch Institute.
The institute also recorded 75,961 new infections, a new daily record for the eurozone’s biggest economy. The moving average (last seven days) also reached a maximum peak of 419.7 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.
The pandemic is the main challenge for the new government coalition, which is expected to take power in December, after the agreement announced between social democrats, greens and liberals.
“The situation is dire,” admitted on Wednesday Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic leader who will be Germany’s future chancellor and successor to conservative Angela Merkel.
The outbreak of the disease is spreading across Europe, currently the region of the world most affected by the pandemic, with more than 2.5 million cases and almost 30,000 deaths in one week.
And the situation is more serious in countries with lower-than-expected vaccination rates, such as in Germany and neighboring Austria, where the government resumed confinement of the population.
– “Acute overload” in hospitals –
In the German case, the vaccination rate of the fully vaccinated population is almost 69%, below that of other large European countries such as Spain, France or Italy.
Hospitals in certain regions are already facing “acute overload” that requires transferring patients, warned Gernot Marx, president of the German federation of critical care physicians.
At the moment, the future government coalition discards the idea of a national confinement and bets on the widespread use of a vaccination certificate in transport and access restrictions for the unvaccinated to certain places.
Scholz said that Germany needs to “study” a possible “extension” of mandatory vaccination, currently in force and in the army and health facilities.
It also pledged to release a billion euros for health professionals.
Angela Merkel’s government, in coalition with the Social Democrats, extended until April 2022 aid for companies affected by closures and falling revenue from the pandemic.
The European department of the World Health Organization has warned that covid-19 could cause an additional 700,000 deaths on the continent by spring (northern hemisphere, autumn in Brazil).
The institution attributes the European wave to the combination of the prevalence of the delta variant, insufficient coverage of vaccines and a relaxation of restrictions.
In the European Union, 67.7% of the population received two doses of vaccine against covid, but the differences are notorious: only 24.2% of Bulgarians are immunized, against 86.7% of Portuguese.
Several countries tightened restrictions, but the measures sparked protests, some violent, in countries like Austria, Belgium or the Netherlands.
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