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CHRISTMAS

Frankfurt cancels Christmas market as infections rise

The German city of Frankfurt has become the latest to cancel its traditional Christmas market as the nation struggles to halt an alarming rise in coronavirus infections.

Frankfurt cancels Christmas market as infections rise
The Frankfurt Christmas market as it opened in 2019. Photo: Daniel Roland/AFP
“Frankfurt is pulling the corona emergency brake,” the bestselling Bild daily wrote after city officials made the decision in emergency talks late Saturday.
   
The Frankfurt “Weihnachtsmarkt” is one of Germany's most popular Christmas markets and usually attracts more than two million visitors who come to sip mulled wine, nibble on roasted chestnuts and shop for seasonal trinkets among a cluster of wooden chalets.
   
“Our goal remains to avoid another lockdown,” Frankfurt mayor Peter Feldmann said in a statement.
   
The worsening pandemic has already forced a slew of other German cities, including Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne, to announce they are scrapping or severely curtailing their Christmas markets, although major ones are still going ahead in Munich and Nuremberg.
   
Germany is home to some 2,500 Christmas markets each year that kick off the festive season in late November and are much loved by locals and tourists alike.
   
They draw about 160 million domestic and international visitors annually who bring in revenues of three to five billion euros ($3.6-5.9 billion), according to the BSM stallkeepers' industry association.
 
 
Building attacked
 
Although Germany coped relatively well with the first wave of coronavirus, case numbers have risen rapidly in recent weeks, as they have across Europe. The country on Sunday reported more than 11,000 new cases over the past 24
hours, bringing the total number since the start of the pandemic to 429,181.
   
Sunday marked that fourth day in a row that new cases crossed the 10,000 mark.
   
Germany has recorded 10,032 coronavirus deaths to date, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control.
   
Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Germans to drastically cut back on socialising to curb the spread of the virus and authorities have introduced stricter rules on private and public gatherings.
   
Berlin police tweeted that they had to break up a “fetish party” of some 600 people on Saturday evening because the venue was too small for the crowd to social distance.
   
On Sunday, police in the capital said a building belonging to the RKI was attacked by unknown persons overnight who threw “incendiary devices” and bottles at the building, causing a small fire and breaking a window.
   
A security guard was able to put out the flames and no one was hurt,according to the statement.
   
Police have opened an investigation into attempted arson and have not ruled out a political motive, given the agency's high-profile role in communicating about the virus.

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COVID-19

Is the pandemic over in Germany?

As much of Germany lifts - or prepares to lift - the last remaining Covid-19 measures, intensive care units say Covid-19 admissions are no longer straining the system.

Is the pandemic over in Germany?

Despite a difficult winter of respiratory illnesses, intensive care units in Germany say Covid-19 admissions have almost halved. The number of cases having to be treated in the ICU has gone down to 800 from 1,500 at the beginning of this month.

“Corona is no longer a problem in intensive care units,” Gernot Marx, Vice President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, told the German Editorial Network. “A the moment, we don’t have to think every day about how to still ensure the care of patients, but how to actually run a service that can help.”

Marx said the drop has allowed them to catch up on many postponed surgeries.

The number of sick employees in hospitals is also falling, helping to relieve the pressure on personnel.

The easing pressure on hospitals correlates with the assessment of prominent virologist and head of the Virology department at Berlin’s Charite – Christian Drosten – who said in December that the pandemic was close to ending, with the winter wave being an endemic one.

German federal and state governments are now in the midst of lifting the last of the country’s pandemic-related restrictions. Free Covid-19 antigen tests for most people, with exceptions for medical personnel, recently ended.

READ ALSO: Free Covid-19 tests end in Germany

Six federal states – Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hessen, Thuringia, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein – have ended mandatory isolation periods for people who test positive for Covid-19.

Bavaria, Saxony-Anhalt, and Schleswig-Holstein have ended the requirement to wear FFP2 masks on public transport, while Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will follow suit on February 2nd.

At that time, the federal government will also drop its requirement for masks to be worn on long-distance trains. Labour Minister Hubertus Heil says that’s when he also intends to exempt workplaces – apart from medical locations – from a mask requirement.

READ ALSO: Germany to drop mask mandate in trains and buses from February 2nd

Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will also end the requirement for patients to wear a mask in doctor’s offices. That’s a requirement that, so far, will stay in place everywhere else. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has also said that he thinks this requirement should remain. 

But some public health insurers and general practitioners are calling for a nationwide end to the obligation for wearing masks in doctor’s offices.

“The pandemic situation is over,” National Association of Statutory Health Physicians (KBV) Chair Andreas Gassen told the RND network. “High-risk patients aren’t treated in all practices. It should generally be left up to medical colleagues to decide whether they want to require masks in their practices.”

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