Thread by @DrEricDing

📍Leadership: Because of growing cases of #B117 & #B1351 variants, Germany 🇩🇪 further extends its #COVID19 lockdown until March 7.

Goal: 🇩🇪 will not lift restrictions until cases down to 35 per 100k per week (~5 per 100k/day)—currently ~68/100k/week. 🧵

2) With an eye to an outbreak of the South African #B1351 variant in the Austrian region of Tyrol bordering Germany's Bavaria state, Merkel said she had conveyed her "concern" to Austrian 🇦🇹 Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Wednesday.

thelocal.de/20210210/germa…

3) “The text (of guideline) stresses that schools and daycare centres should be "the first to gradually reopen", but that it is for individual states to decide how and when that happens.”

4) Germany will review whether nursery workers and teachers can be given higher priority in vaccinations.
Hairdressers will, however, be able to reopen on March 1st, regardless of the lockdown extension, provided they adhere strictly to hygiene regulations.

5) “We want to do everything in our power so that we don’t end up riding an up-and-down wave of openings and closures,” Merkel said, calling the period until mid-March “existential” for Germany’s management of the pandemic.

google.com/amp/s/amp.fran…

6) “But she called on Germans to be patient as fears grow over more contagious virus variants first detected in Britain and South Africa.”

7) “The new strains “are spreading especially quickly and require significant additional efforts”, the government said in conclusions agreed at the meeting.”

8) What are the current rules?
•All nonessential shops & services remain closed.
•People in shops & public transport are required to wear surgical masks or FFP2.
•Employers must, wherever possible, allow employees to work from home until March 15.
google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.c…

9) •Contact at private meetings is restricted to just one other person not living in the same household.
•Schools are largely closed and students are taught through distance learning.

10) head of German intensive care association, DIVI, warned that reopening schools and kindergartens would lead to a re-emergence of virus cases.
"Schools and kindergartens are unfortunately places where the virus is passed on," DIVI head Gernot Marx told Rheinische Post.

11) “Germany's national disease control center last week said that the more contagious variant of the virus first observed in Britain has now been seen in most of Germany's 16 states.
Another variant from South Africa #B1351 has also been reported several times in Germany.

12) “Considering the virus mutations, the steps to lift the restrictions must come carefully and gradually in order to avoid risking the successful curbing of infections," the 🇩🇪 document stated.

13) Austria now has over 430 confirmed and suspected cases of the more resistant #B1351 variant. This is worrisome. The other B117 is also rising fast in Germany and Denmark.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1359135923615719428

14) Meanwhile in Denmark, which sequences all #SARSCoV2 samples from all cases now, the % of #COVID19 now #B117 from 🇬🇧 is up to 27%! Denmark CDC is right to be worried.

nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-1…

15) “Experts tell us that it will be only a matter of time until these mutations will become dominant,” Merkel said in a speech to parliament in Berlin. “We know that the danger of mutations can again wreck our successes.” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…