Other parts of Europe, harder hit than Germany, are also easing restrictions but with social-distancing and face masks still a must-do
A closed cafe near the Thyssenkrupp headquarter office complex during coronavirus lockdown measures in Essen, Germany, on Wednesday, April 15 2020. Picture: BLOOMBERG/WOLFRAM SCHROLL
Germany will need to ease restrictions in “small steps”, Merkel said in Berlin on Wednesday after consulting with the country’s 16 state leaders. “We have made some progress. But I do have to stress that this progress is fragile,” she said. “This is a situation in which caution is the order of the day, not foolhardiness.”
“The epidemic has not gone,” Merkel’s chancellery minister, Helge Braun, said in an interview with ARD TV on Thursday. “We have slowed it massively and that is a great achievement by the people in Germany, and that’s why we have to take things in very, very small steps when it comes to opening things up again.”
Merkel’s aggressive effort to address the fallout from the virus has won plaudits even as the country’s economy is plunged into a deeper recession than during the financial crisis a little more than a decade ago. Comprehensive testing and relative progress in protecting more vulnerable members of society have resulted in a lower fatality rate than European partners such as Italy, Spain and the UK.
Companies suffering from shutdowns face ballooning debt and are “sliding toward insolvency” every day the measures are being maintained, according to Markenverband, which represents 400 German firms with well-known brands. “We need a fast exit from the shutdown.”
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