German government, states agree on lockdown extension

BERLIN: The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and state leaders on Tuesday agreed to extend the country’s lockdown until Feb. 14 to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, sources told Reuters.

They also agreed to mandate medical masks for passengers of public transport, the sources added.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 11,369 to 2,052,028, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday. The reported death toll rose by 989 to 47,622, the tally showed.

Top German politicians on Monday also called for new measures to slow the spread of new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus, including more health checks for cross-border commuters and intensified gene sequencing of virus samples.

In future, health labs will have to sequence 5% of the samples they collect when screening for the coronavirus to check if they match more virulent variants first identified in Britain and South Africa, or if new mutations were emerging in Germany.

An outbreak of a mutated variant of the coronavirus at a clinic in the southern German alpine town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which appeared not to be one of the known variants, fanned the concerns.