Anyone who lives in a hotspot is no longer allowed to go on excursions. The number of people who are allowed to meet is further limited. New rules apply to those returning to travel. The federal and state governments have decided on several measures. An overview.
Lockdown
As announced in advance of the meeting, the lockdown will be extended until January 31st. That means: all citizens should stay at home for the next three weeks, as far as possible. Restaurants, cultural and leisure facilities and many shops will also remain closed. Company canteens should be closed where work processes permit. On January 25, the federal and state governments want to decide how to proceed from February 1.
Contact restrictions
So far, meetings of two households with up to five people were allowed. Now private get-togethers should only be allowed with one other person who does not live in the household. The tightening is similar to the strict contact restrictions from the lockdown in the spring.
Limitation of the range of motion
In hotspots, the radius of movement is restricted to 15 kilometers around the place of residence. Exceptions are only made if there is a valid reason. It is unclear in detail which reasons are accepted. But according to Chancellor Angela Merkel, visits to the doctor and the way to work are part of it. Excursions, however, are not considered valid reasons. The regulation only affects rural districts with a seven-day incidence of more than 200 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants. There are currently around 70 districts, many of them in Saxony and Thuringia. But you wouldn’t measure the distance within a city like Berlin, said Merkel.
In Germany, there are only limited radii of movement in Saxony, where people are allowed a maximum of 15 kilometers from their place of residence. Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) had proposed a corresponding regulation for his state.
The regional transport companies want to maintain the full range of rail and bus services at least during peak times, even with a restricted range of motion for citizens.
Schools and daycare centers
Schools and day-care centers should remain largely closed until at least the end of January or only offer limited operation. The measures taken by the federal states would also have to be “extended to the end of January in accordance with the decision of December 13, 2020”, the decision said. This also applies to daycare centers, for which the countries have different regulations: some have closed them and offer emergency care, others have left daycare centers open with the appeal to parents to look after children at home anyway.
Child sickness benefit for ten additional days
Parents should be allowed to take sick leave for children twice as long this year as usual. The federal government wants to regulate by law that child sickness benefit is granted for ten additional days per parent (20 additional days for single parents) in 2021.
The entitlement should also apply to cases in which the child needs to be looked after at home because the school or kindergarten is closed due to the pandemic or because classroom attendance has been suspended. The child sickness benefit is usually paid by the statutory health insurance company if parents cannot go to work because of the care of a sick child.
Volunteers for more tests in retirement and nursing homes
Since there has not always been sufficient testing in old people’s and care facilities – despite requirements – volunteers are now to be sent to the homes. The aid organizations should take over the training. The central municipal associations should clarify the need, the Federal Employment Agency support the placement.
Compulsory test for travelers
An additional test is now to be introduced for entry into Germany from risk areas. Entrants must be tested from January 11 up to 48 hours before arrival or directly after entry. Regardless of this, the ten-day quarantine obligation remains. The quarantine can also be shortened by a negative result of another test carried out on the fifth day after entry at the earliest. There is also still the obligation to register digitally. The federal government has now declared around 150 of the around 200 countries worldwide to be corona risk areas and warns against traveling there. There are hardly any regions in Europe that are not at risk
In addition, the spread of the mutated coronaviruses should be contained “through prioritized tracking and quarantine”. “In the case of unavoidable entries from areas in which such mutated virus variants occur, the federal police will increasingly monitor compliance with the special entry regulations,” the decision said. In these cases, the federal states should “intensify control” of compliance with the quarantine rules.
Vaccinations
The slow start of vaccinations was also the topic of the Bund-Länder-Round. According to the decision, the federal and state governments want to offer all residents of inpatient care facilities a vaccination offer in January. The vaccine production capacities are also to be expanded. How this should be done in detail is still unclear. Chancellor Merkel wants to discuss with her ministers on Wednesday how additional production can be supported by the government, as reported by the dpa news agency.
Economic aid
The full disbursement of the November aid applied for by the federal states should take place no later than January 10th. Applications for December aid can be submitted since mid-December 2020, the first installments have been made since the beginning of January. The first disbursements of Bridging Aid III, which will run until the end of June 2021, are to be made by the federal states in the first quarter of 2021. The federal and state governments want to work on realizing the payments as quickly as possible, according to the resolution.
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