Is the wolf once again, loose in Europe?
Quote:Germany to repurpose refugee camps to detain people who repeatedly flout CovidArchived Source:
rules by going out when they should be quarantining
*Germans who don't quarantine to be held in detention centres under Covid rules
*State of Saxony has confirmed plans to hold rule-breakers in a refugee camp
*Baden-Württemberg will use two hospital rooms under watch of German police
*Schleswig-Holstein will use an area within a juvenile detention centre
'Germans who refuse to quarantine after being exposed to Covid will be held in detention
centres under new rules prepared by regional authorities.
Herr Merkel and the results of control.
The eastern state of Saxony has confirmed plans to hold quarantine-flouters in a fenced-off section
of a refugee camp set to be build next week. The regional state claimed that the facility will only be
used for people who have repeatedly flouted lockdown rules around self-isolation.
Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany will use two hospital rooms to detain repeat offenders,
who will be guarded by police.
In Brandenburg, authorities will detain a section of a refugees centre, while Schleswig-Holstein will use
an area within a juvenile detention centre. Legal experts told Die Welt that state governments have powers
to detain people for breaching quarantine rules under the Disease Protection Act, passed by the German
Bundestag last March and renewed in November.
The plan has been widely criticised, with AfD MP Joana Cotar accused the Saxony government of 'reading
too much Orwell'. German authorities have come under fire for their management of the pandemic, with
proposals to impose national vaccine mandates in a bid to control the virus branded 'social dynamite'
by opposition figures.
It comes as Chancellor Angela Merkel considers imposing a 'mega-lockdown' and suspending public
transport after sparking a public backlash in the UK by calling 'mutant' Covid the 'British virus'.
Mass-selling newspaper Bild reported Ms Merkel wants to effectively shut down the country almost totally,
amid a general fear of the fast=spreading variant of coronavirus first detected in southern England.
Countries in Europe are bracing themselves for the impact of the new variant of Covid-19, which has caused
daily cases to drastically increase in the UK, driving up the number of hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
In neighbouring France, the government is expected to announce new restrictions on Thursday, also amid
fears of the UK variant, but unlike some of its neighbours a full lockdown appears off the agenda for now.
Jean-François Delfraissy, head of the scientific council advising the government on the epidemic, told France
Info radio on Wednesday that the UK variant accounted for an estimated 1 percent of new Covid-19 infections.
This, he said, was not enough to justify closing schools in the country, saying 'We think English data on the
variant are not definitive enough to lead us to recommend the closing of schools in France.'
While the new variant is yet to become widespread in Germany, experts are concerned that their current
coronavirus measures are not strict enough, especially given the new strain is seemingly more contagious
than that of the first wave.
The head of Germany's country's disease control agency claimed that Germany has too many loopholes in
its coronavirus lockdown rules, and said he believed that people were travelling more than in the first lockdown.
Lothar Wieler, president of the Institute, said data indicated people in Germany are travelling more than during
the first phase of the pandemic in spring, contributing to the virus' spread.
German authorities have imposed restrictions on social contacts, largely closed schools and limited travel for
those in areas with high infection rates, but the rules aren't uniformly enforced across the country's 16 states.
'To me, these measures we're now taking aren't a complete lockdown,' said Wieler. 'There are still too many
exceptions and they aren't being strictly implemented.'
Officials are considering tougher restrictions to curb the continued rise in infections.
The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 23.36 per 100,000 people
on Dec. 30 to 26.03 per 100,000 people on January 13.
While Germany's total deaths per capita since the pandemic began remain far lower than many of its European
neighbours, 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
one million.
France on Wednesday recorded around 23,000 new cases of Covid-19, around half the number detected in Britain
on the same day but still far above the 5,000 figure the government had been aiming for by mid-December.
Among the measures floated to try to avert a much-feared third wave of infections amid an uptick in cases linked
to the British variant include expanding a 6:00 pm curfew in place in parts of the east to a national level.
Most of France is still subject to an 8:00 pm curfew imposed in mid-December when a second national lockdown
was lifted. Bringing it forward by two hours would stall the 'apero effect', said the leader of President Emmanuel
Macron's Republic on the Move party, Stanislas Guerini, referring to the French tradition of meeting up for a
pre-dinner aperitif.
France is warily eyeing the spread across its territory of a new variant of the virus discovered in Britain, which is
believed to be highly contagious...'
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.