German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz announced harsh measures are being taken against those citizens who are unvaccinated for Covid-19: They will be barred from public life, banned from nonessential places such as restaurants, bars, stores, and events, the BBC News reported.
The new measures agreed on by German leaders during a meeting this week, include:
- Shops, restaurants, museums, movie theaters for vaccinated or recovered people only
- Additional tests for the vaccinated
- Nightclubs, music venues to close in areas where incidence rate hits 350
- New measures will take effect once approved by lawmakers, likely in the coming days
- A maximum of 15,000 spectators will be allowed in football stadiums
- Indoor sports venues will have a maximum of 5,000 in attendance
- Private gatherings for unvaccinated will be limited to one household
- Mask requirements in schools
- Parliament will vote on mandatory vaccines in early 2022
- An exception is being made for those recently recovered from Covid.
“Culture and leisure nationwide will be open only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered,” Merkel said in her announcement, according to DW Politics online. 69 percent of eligible Germans are vaccinated for Covid, but the disease is spiking in the country and the government predicts 6,000 people may be in intensive care by Christmas.
Germany has a history of separating the “unclean,” said critics, but with compulsory vaccinations likely in the near future, the country will move into a whole other realm of forced medical procedures, something for which it is also known.
“Merkel said an ethics committee will be asked to draft legislation to make vaccination compulsory, with the Bundestag debating and voting on the issue early in the new year,” DW reported.
Scholz, who is expected to be announced as Germany’s new chancellor next week, said getting vaccinated is “how we get out of this crisis” and “if we had a higher vaccination rate, we wouldn’t be discussing this now,” according to the German news agency.
