Tag Archives: Germany

Germany extends lockdown until March 7

By Sabine Siebold and Andreas Rinke

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany will extend restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus until March 7, though schools and hair salons may open sooner, Chancellor Angela Merkel and leaders of the 16 federal states agreed on Wednesday.

The number of new daily infections in Germany has been falling, prompting some regional leaders to push for a timetable to ease the lockdown, but concerns are growing about the impact of more infectious variants of the virus on case numbers.

“We know that these mutants are a reality now, and with that it (the infection rate) will increase. The question is how quickly it will increase,” Merkel told journalists in a news conference.

Under the agreement, some exceptions will be made to a strict lockdown which has been in place since mid-December.

Hairdressers will be allowed to reopen from March 1 and individual states can decide on how to re-start school classes. Merkel, who has adopted a cautious approach throughout the pandemic, has said nurseries and primary schools take priority.

The rest of the economy can start to re-open gradually where the spread of the virus drops to no more than 35 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days.

On Wednesday, that number was 68, having fallen from a high near 200 in late December. It was last below 50 in October.

BUSINESS ANGST

Some business and industry associations have pushed for an easing of the restrictions as soon as possible, citing the damage inflicted on Europe’s biggest economy, which shrank by 5% last year.

“The situation is serious,” the BDI industry and BDA employers groups said. “We urgently call for an easing plan.”

However, the Ifo economic think-tank said a lockdown extension until mid-March was bearable and that a swifter easing that triggered a surge in cases could create greater damage.

Germany reported 8,072 new cases on Wednesday and a further 813 deaths, bringing the total death toll to 62,969.

(Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Maria Sheahan, Gareth Jones and Cynthia Osterman)

German sniffer dogs detect COVID-19 with 94% accuracy

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – A German veterinary clinic has trained sniffer dogs to detect the novel coronavirus in human saliva samples with 94% accuracy.

The dogs are conditioned to scent out the “corona odor” that comes from cells in infected people, said Esther Schalke, a vet at Germany’s armed forces school for service dogs.

Filou, a 3-year-old Belgian Shepherd, and Joe Cocker, a 1-year-old Cocker Spaniel, are two of the dogs being trained at Hanover’s University of Veterinary Medicine.

“We did a study where we had dogs sniffing samples from COVID-positive patients and we can say that they have a 94% probability in our study … that they can sniff them out,” said Holger Volk, head of the veterinary clinic.

“So dogs can really sniff out people with infections and without infections, as well as asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID patients,” he added.

Stephan Weil, premier of Lower Saxony, the state of which Hanover is the capital, said he was impressed with the study and called for a feasibility tests before the sniffer dogs are put to use in everyday life, such as on people attending concerts.

“We now need tests in selected events,” Weil said.

In Finland, dogs trained to detect the novel coronavirus began sniffing passenger samples at Finland’s Helsinki-Vantaa airport last September, in a pilot project alongside more usual testing at the airport.

Chile’s Santiago international airport is also using canine detectors.

(Reporting by Leon Malherbe and Fanny Brodersen; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

“A symbol of hope” – German military aid arrives in Portugal

By Catarina Demony and Michael Nienaber

LISBON (Reuters) – A German military plane carrying over 20 doctors and nurses together with ventilators and hospital beds arrived on Wednesday in coronavirus-stricken Portugal, where a severe rise in cases has prompted several European nations to offer help.

The German team will manage a new unit of eight ICU beds in a private hospital in Lisbon, Hospital da Luz, which was equipped but lacked the staff to operate, Health Minister Marta Temido said at the military base where the plane landed.

“Eight beds may not sound like much, but it is a lot for a health system under significant pressure,” Temido said. “The help Germany extended is of great use for a health system facing the challenges we are – highly specialized health professionals.”

The medical team, consisting of eight doctors and 18 nurses, left the military base in northern Lisbon by bus shortly after arrival. The cargo, which includes 150 hospital beds and 50 ventilators, was unloaded after their departure.

“This is a vivid sign of European solidarity and a symbol of hope,” German ambassador Martin Ney told reporters at the military base.

Austria has offered to take in 10 to 15 COVID-19 intensive care patients who would be distributed in various hospitals across the country, its ambassador in Portugal, Robert Zischg, told Reuters.

The two countries’ health and defense ministries were in regular contact and it was up to Portugal to decide whether it would accept the offer, he said.

Hospitals across Portugal, a nation of about 10 million people, appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances sometimes queuing for hours because of a lack of beds while some health units are struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Although daily infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the country on Tuesday retreated further from last week’s records and fewer patients were in intensive care, doctors and nurses are still over-stretched.

The island of Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal which took in three COVID-19 intensive care patients last Friday, will also take in another three, its regional government told news agency Lusa.

Portugal, which has so far reported a total of 13,017 COVID-19 deaths and 731,861 cases, reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths last month as cases accelerated.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee in Lisbon; editing by Emma Thomasson and Angus MacSwan)

German minister sees COVID-19 vaccine shortage well into April

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany faces a shortage of coronavirus shots well into April, its health minister said on Thursday, and called for a summit with the country’s state leaders to discuss vaccinations as the government faced fresh criticism over the pace of the roll-out.

Several people close to the talks told Reuters that the meeting will take place on Monday.

“We will still have at least 10 tough weeks with a shortage of vaccine,” Jens Spahn said in a Tweet, adding the meeting should focus on how Europe gets its fair share of shots and what can be done to support the process.

Germany, like the rest of the European Union, is scrambling to obtain shots as the West’s biggest drugmakers slow deliveries to the bloc due to production problems.

Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper described the problem of procuring enough vaccines as a “scandal”.

Meanwhile, popular approval of the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has dropped to 49%, its lowest since the start of the pandemic, a poll for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed.

Spahn said he wanted to invite pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers to a meeting to discuss the way forward, adding he recognized vaccine production was complex and production could not be built up in a few weeks.

On Tuesday, Spahn supported European Union proposals to set up a register of vaccine exports, as tensions grow with AstraZeneca and Pfizer over sudden supply cuts just a month after the EU started vaccinating citizens.

Germany reported 17,553 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 2,178,828, and another 941 deaths. The seven-day incidence rate fell under 100 cases per 100,000 for the first time since the end of October. The government wants it to drop below 50.

Spahn has said that if cases continue to fall, schools and nurseries should be the first to reopen after a lockdown currently due to last until Feb. 14.

Germany is also preparing entry restrictions for travelers from Britain, Brazil and South Africa, the interior ministry said, and hopes to decide by Friday as concerns mount about more contagious variants.

“We have to get ahead of the situation,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson, Caroline Copley and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Thomas Seythal, Alex Richardson and Giles Elgood)

Police dismantle world’s ‘most dangerous’ criminal hacking network

(Reuters) – International law enforcement agencies said on Wednesday they had dismantled a criminal hacking scheme used to steal billions of dollars from businesses and private citizens worldwide.

Police in six European countries, as well as Canada and the United States, completed a joint operation to take control of Internet servers used to run and control a malware network known as “Emotet,” authorities said in a statement.

“Emotet is currently seen as the most dangerous malware globally,” Germany’s BKA federal police agency said in a statement. “The smashing of the Emotet infrastructure is a significant blow against international organized Internet crime.”

Emotet is used by cyber criminals to first gain access to a victim’s computer before then downloading additional malicious software, such as trojans designed to steal banking passwords or ransomware which can lock a computer until an extortion fee is paid.

Security experts say Emotet’s operators often sell access to victims’ computers to other hackers, using a “malware-as-a-service” business model that has made them one of the world’s most prolific and damaging cybercrime groups.

German police said infections with Emotet had caused at least 14.5 million euros ($17.56 million) of damage in their country. Globally, Emotet-linked damages cost about $2.5 billion, Ukrainian authorities said.

Ukraine’s General Prosecutor said police had carried out raids in the eastern city of Kharkiv to seize computers used by the hackers. Authorities released photos showing piles of bank cards, cash and a room festooned with tangled computer equipment, but did not say if any arrests were made.

($1 = 0.8259 euros)

(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska in Gdansk, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Jack Stubbs in London; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

As bodies pile up, Germany’s eastern COVID hot spots struggle for answers

By Joseph Nasr

MEISSEN, Germany (Reuters) – For some in Meissen the caskets piling up in the eastern German city’s sole crematorium are a tragic reminder of what happens when the coronavirus is not taken seriously. For others it is simply nature’s way.

Meissen, along with other places across old East Germany that are generally poorer, older and more supportive of a far-right opposed to lockdown, are the worst hit by the pandemic in the country, complicating Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to bring it under control.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said manager Joerg Schaldach, whose furnaces cremated 1,400 bodies last month, double the figure from December last year. More than half had died of COVID-19 and Schaldach expects some 1,700 cremations in total this month.

“People are dying alone in hospital without a loved one holding their hand,” added Schaldach, standing in the main hall cleared of chairs used for funeral services to make way for caskets. “People get just a phone call: ‘deceased.’ A farewell at the coffin is not possible, all they get is an urn.”

Like many east German regions that had a relatively mild first wave, Saxony, home to Meissen and a stronghold of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has the second highest 7-day incidence rate in Germany, almost double the national average of 136 per 100,000 people.

The neighboring eastern state of Thuringia, where the AfD is also popular, is now Germany’s worst hot spot, taking over from Saxony last week.

“If the Saxony government had acted earlier, we would have had the pandemic under control. But now we are a national problem,” said Frank Richter, a lawmaker in the Saxony parliament for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

“The pile of bodies in Meissen is bitter medicine against ignorance.”

Detlev Spangenberg, an AfD lawmaker in the national parliament from Saxony, said the party should not be blamed.

“We’ve had a lockdown since November and the numbers are not going down. It’s nothing to do with the AfD,” he said late last week. “We are just saying that the collateral damage of lockdowns outweighs the benefits.”

MISTAKES MADE

The governors of both Saxony and Thuringia had in September opposed efforts by Merkel to introduce restrictions after the summer in anticipation of a second wave of COVID-19, only to acknowledge recently that they had made an error in judgment.

On the deserted streets of Meissen, a city of 28,000 famed for it porcelain industry, people had different explanations for the dramatic surge in infections, ranging from naive complacency to skepticism partly promoted by the AfD.

“It sounds strange, but I noticed that young people follow rules like wearing a mask and keeping distance more than old people,” said Jenna Schmidt, a 27-year-old waitress at a local restaurant shuttered since November.

“When numbers started to rise in October, you’d hear old people say, ‘oh I’m too old, I’ll die soon anyway’,” said Schmidt, walking with her toddler in the snow in the main square that is usually bustling with tourists.

“It’s attitudes like this that got us here.”

At the crematorium, men working around the clock unloaded caskets marked with pieces of paper stating the deceased’s name, date of birth and death and address. Almost all were in their late 60s or older. Some had lived in care homes.

“There is a lot of panic and hysteria,” said Roswitha Zeidler, a 60-year-old who works as a cleaning lady in a hotel. “Old people die all the time. I’m sick and tired of all the restrictions and predictions. I just want my life back.”

Merkel and state leaders will hold talks on Tuesday on whether more restrictions are needed when a hard lockdown expires on Jan. 31.

Germany, which imposed a lockdown in November that was tightened early last month, recorded just over 7,000 confirmed new infections on Monday and 214 deaths, roughly half the figures from a day earlier.

‘OWN GOAL’

While limited testing and lower death reports at the weekend may have played a role, Health Minister Jens Spahn said the trend was downward but the numbers remained far too high.

Ute Czeschka, an independent member of the Meissen city council, said another factor that contributed to infections exploding in eastern German states like Saxony was their proximity to the Czech Republic and Poland, two hot spots on Germany’s eastern border.

“Many of our health care workers and doctors come from hot spots like the Czech Republic,” said Czeschka. “So this didn’t help. But the main reason we got here is that, until recently, many people did not believe in the virus. Now they do.”

SPD lawmaker Richter said that the skepticism of the coronavirus promoted by local AfD leaders, who during the summer showed up at anti-lockdown protests not wearing masks, had encouraged people to flout hygiene and distancing rules.

“Fighting a pandemic is like a team trying to win a soccer match,” said Richter. “You can’t win if some players are trying to score an own goal.”

A study by the Forsa research institute found that only 19% of AfD supporters believed the federal government’s information about the pandemic was credible and less than 30% of men who support the party followed distancing and hygiene rules.

This compared with 75% and 65% respectively for the whole population.

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Record daily German COVID deaths spark Merkel ‘mega-lockdown’ plan: Bild

By Andreas Rinke and Caroline Copley

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany recorded a new record number of deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday, prompting calls for an even tighter lockdown after the country emerged relatively unscathed in 2020.

Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted a “mega-lockdown,” mass-selling newspaper Bild reported, shutting down the country almost completely for fear of fast-spreading variant of the virus first detected in Britain.

She was considering measures including shutting down both local and long-distance public transport, though such steps had not yet been decided, Bild reported.

While Germany’s total deaths per capita since the pandemic began remain far lower than the United States, its daily per capita mortality since mid-December has often exceeded that of the United States.

Germany’s daily death toll currently equates to about 15 deaths per million people, versus a 13 U.S. deaths per million.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 25,164 new coronavirus cases and 1,244 fatalities, bringing Germany’s total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 43,881.

Germany initially managed the pandemic better than its neighbors with a strict lockdown last spring, but it has seen a sharp rise in cases and deaths in recent months, with the RKI saying people were not taking the virus seriously enough.

RKI president Lothar Wieler said on Thursday restrictions were not being implemented as consistently as they were during the first wave and said more people should work from home, adding that the current lockdown needed to be tightened further.

Germany introduced a partial lockdown in November that kept shops and schools open, but it tightened the rules in mid-December, closing non-essential stores, and children have not returned to classrooms since the Christmas holidays.

Hospitals in 10 out of Germany’s 16 states were facing bottlenecks as 85% of intensive care unit beds were occupied by coronavirus patients, Wieler said.

A meeting of regional leaders planned for Jan. 25 to discuss whether to extend the lockdown into February should be brought forward, said Winfried Kretschmann, the premier of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Merkel was due to speak to ministers on Thursday about ramping up production of vaccines.

So far only about 1% of the German population has been vaccinated, or 842,455 people, the RKI reported.

Germany has so far recorded 16 cases of people with the fast-spreading strain of the virus first detected in Britain and four with the strain from South Africa, Wieler said, although he admitted gene sequencing of samples was not being done broadly.

Wieler urged people who were offered a COVID-19 vaccination to accept it.

“At the end of the year we will have this pandemic under control,” Wieler said. Enough vaccines would then be available to inoculate the entire population, he said.

(Reporting by Kirsti Knolle and Thomas Escritt, Writing by Caroline Copley and Emma Thomasson, Editing by Riham Alkousaa, Angus MacSwan, William Maclean and Nick Macfie)

Germany introduces tougher restrictions in pandemic battle

By Andreas Rinke and Holger Hansen

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is extending its nationwide lockdown until the end of the month and introducing tougher new restrictions in an effort to curb surging coronavirus infections, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday.

“We need to restrict contact more strictly… We ask all citizens to restrict contact to the absolute minimum,” Merkel told reporters after a meeting with the leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states.

The new rules restrict for the first time non-essential travel for residents of hard-hit areas all over Germany.

They limit movement to a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) radius in towns and districts where the number of new coronavirus cases is above 200 per 100,000 residents over seven days.

Members of any one household will be allowed to meet only one other person in public. That compares with a current rule under which public gatherings are limited to five people from two households.

Like many other European countries, Germany is struggling to contain a second wave of the virus. Britain began its third COVID-19 lockdown on Tuesday with citizens under orders to stay at home.

Concern is growing that hospitals in Germany will struggle to cope, and Merkel said a new mutation of the coronavirus first detected in Britain increased the need to be more cautious.

SHOPS, SCHOOLS TO STAY SHUT

Shops and restaurants will remain shut until the end of January. Schools are also to remain closed, with classes to be held online, until at least the end of the month.

“We believe these measures are justified, even if they are hard,” Merkel said.

The chancellor said she and the state leaders would review the new measures on Jan. 25.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 11,897 to 1.787 million in the last day, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Tuesday. The death toll rose by 944 to 35,518.

Germany had imposed a partial lockdown in November but was forced to close schools, shops and restaurants in mid-December after the initial steps failed to have the desired impact.

Germany is rolling out a vaccine against COVID-19 but the media and some officials have criticized the government for a slow start and for ordering too few doses. By Tuesday, around 317,000 people had received a shot.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Joseph Nasr and Sabine Siebold; writing by Madeline Chambers and Maria Sheahan, Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Gareth Jones)

U.S. Supreme Court hears World War Two-era Jewish property claims

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The lingering legacy of World War Two reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday as the justices weighed two cases involving claims by Jews in Germany and Hungary and their descendants whose property was taken amid persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.

The justices heard arguments in the two cases that hinge upon a federal law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that limits the jurisdiction of American courts over lawsuits against foreign governments.

In one case, the justices considered Germany’s bid to avoid facing a lawsuit in a U.S. court over medieval artwork that its former Nazi government pressured Jewish art dealers to sell in the 1930’s. The other concerns Hungary’s similar attempt to avoid litigation originally brought by 14 U.S. citizens who survived that nation’s World War Two-era campaign of genocide against its Jewish population.

The justices appeared more sympathetic to the arguments made by Germany than Hungary, while also recognizing foreign policy concerns of allowing such claims to be heard in U.S. courts.

The Germany case focuses upon a 17th century collection of medieval art known as the Welfenschatz that includes gem-studded busts of Christian saints, golden crucifixes and other precious objects. The plaintiffs – heirs of the art dealers – have said they are the rightful owners of the collection.

They sued in U.S. federal court in Washington in 2015, saying Germany owes them either the return of the artwork or more than $250 million in damages.

In 1935, a group of Jewish art dealers in Germany sold the collection to the state of Prussia, then being administered by prominent Nazi official Hermann Goering. The plaintiffs said that the sale was a “sham transaction” made under duress.

The art collection is currently in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, a German governmental entity.

Germany has said that U.S. courts have no role because the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not allow claims over the alleged seizure of a citizen’s property by its own government. Some justices questioned that assumption, with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas among others wondering if “stateless people” who are stripped of citizenship would be left without recourse.

Some justices said the language of the U.S. law seems to be clear that domestic property claims can be permitted if they fall within a broader genocide claim.

“It seems to cover the kind of property-taking that is at issue in this case,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

But Kagan and others also appeared to be worried about a ruling along those lines in part because it might require judges to undertake the contentious task of determining what constitutes a genocide.

A federal judge in Washington ruled against Germany in 2017. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit narrowed the case the following year, saying claims could proceed against the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation but not against Germany’s government itself.

The Hungarian Holocaust survivors filed suit in Washington in 2010 seeking restitution for possessions taken from them and their families when they were forced to board trains destined for concentration camps. A federal judge tossed out the lawsuit in 2017 but the D.C. Circuit revived it a year later, prompting Hungary to appeal to the high court.

Hungary has said that the possibility of “international friction” raised by the lawsuit means it should be dismissed and that the plaintiffs should sue in Hungary first.

The justices appeared reluctant to rule that foreign policy concerns could always be cited as a reason to toss out a lawsuit, but some also seemed reluctant to conclude that such issues should not be taken into account.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)

Merkel warns Germany needs tougher lockdown to get through winter

By Andreas Rinke

BERLIN (Reuters) – German leaders came out on Monday in favor of stricter measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, a few days after the country posted its highest one-day death toll so far.

Chancellor Angela Merkel told party colleagues that existing lockdown measures – with bars and restaurants closed and shops admitting limited numbers – were too little to get the virus under control.

“The situation is getting very serious: these measures will not be enough to get us through the winter,” participants said she had told a meeting of her conservative bloc’s legislators.

Daily infections are no longer rising as sharply as previously in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, but they have stagnated at a high level and the highest single-day coronavirus death toll yet was reported last Wednesday.

Markus Soeder, premier of the southern state of Bavaria, which has the nation’s highest death toll, said he was certain regional and national leaders would agree tighter measures before Christmas. They had previously agreed not to revisit lockdown rules before Jan. 10.

Although vaccines that are expected to help contain the pandemic are on their way, available doses are limited, meaning that only certain groups, notably the very elderly, can expect to be inoculated during the winter, an expert panel ruled on Monday.

Meanwhile, some states are going further on their own initiative: Rhineland-Palatinate banned takeaway sales of mulled wine in a bid to discourage disease-spreading impromptu street parties.

From Wednesday, Bavaria will allow people to leave home only for essential reasons, while evening curfews are planned for hotspots with the highest infection rates.

Data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases on Monday morning showed the number of confirmed cases rose by 12,332 in the past 24 hours to 1,183,655. The reported death toll rose 147 to 18,919 – still well below that of large European peers such as Spain, France and Italy.

(Writing by Thomas Escritt and Caroline Copley Editing by Mark Heinrich)