Cities restrict or prohibit Corona “walks”
Thursday, December 30th, 7 p.m .: More and more Bavarian municipalities prohibit unannounced gatherings and “walks” to protest against Corona measures or impose strict conditions. The city of Munich announced on Thursday that on January 1st, 3rd and 5th “all stationary or moving demos” against the corona policy are forbidden in the entire city area if they are not registered in advance. The aim is “to prevent a proliferation of in no way justifiable demos with partly violent participants”, in which neither distances nor masks are kept. A fine of up to 3000 euros can be imposed on each participant.
In Munich, despite the ban, several thousand people once again marched through the city center on Wednesday. The police established personal details, issued 1,300 dismissals and reported around 700 demonstrators for an administrative offense. You should expect fines shortly, the city said. The city of Augsburg ordered a mask requirement and a minimum distance for so-called walks of several hundred participants from January 1st to 3rd. The city of Würzburg banned “walks” by lateral thinkers from Thursday evening and only allowed stationary rallies with a maximum of 250 people until January 9, who had to keep their distance and wear masks.
The district office of Nördlingen also restricted the “walks” planned for Thursday evening and Monday, in terms of location and time, and ordered a distance and a mask requirement. The District Office in Rosenheim also decreed that a “lantern walk” through Wasserburg planned for Monday may only take place stationary and with a mask and distance. In Straubing, from Friday “only fixed meetings in connection with so-called” Corona walks “that have been registered in advance are permitted.
More than 65,000 vaccinations for children – fewer injections over Christmas
Thursday, December 30th, 11.07 a.m .: A good two weeks after the official start of the vaccination campaign for five to eleven year olds, more than 65,000 children in Bavaria received their first vaccination against corona. The Ministry of Health in Munich announced that around 7.9 percent of children in this age group had been vaccinated for the first time in the Free State.
In view of the short period of time, the Christmas and public holidays, this is “relatively good vaccination progress”. Some vaccination centers have also announced that they will not start vaccinations in this age group until 2022, said a ministry spokeswoman. So far, a little more than half of the vaccinations (around 52 percent) for children have been given in vaccination centers, the rest in medical practices.
According to the ministry, the vaccination campaign in Bavaria stalled during the holidays. From December 20 to 26, only just under 700,000 syringes were used against Corona, compared with more than 1.1 million in the previous week. The number of weekly vaccinations in Bavaria was only lower than in the Christmas week in mid-November (just under 500,000).
According to the information, around 48,000 people were vaccinated on Christmas Eve and the two Christmas holidays in Bavaria. After all, around ten percent of the syringes were first vaccinations. At the beginning of the current week, the vaccination rate picked up again, said a ministry spokeswoman. On Tuesday alone, almost 115,000 people in Bavaria were vaccinated against Corona, the majority of them (around 88,000) received booster vaccinations. Almost 44 percent of all adults in Bavaria have now received a booster vaccination.
Seven-day incidence in Bavaria is increasing slightly
Thursday, December 30th, 7.03 a.m .: For the first time in weeks, the seven-day incidence in the Free State has risen again: On Thursday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a value of 179.3, the day before it was 172.6. However, due to the holidays, the numbers are not very reliable, as the RKI points out – fewer people go to test and the data is recorded with a delay. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) assumed on Wednesday that the actual incidence in Germany is “two to three times as high” as reported by the RKI.
The health authorities in Bavaria reported 6047 new cases to the RKI in the past 24 hours, 62 people died from or with the corona virus in the same period. The district of Unterallgäu with 324.3 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days, the city of Schweinfurt with 320.7 and the district of Rhön-Grabfeld with 295.6 have the highest recorded incidence values in Bavaria. The city of Passau reports the lowest value of 82.0. According to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, 684 Covid patients were in intensive care units in Bavaria on Thursday morning, making up around a fifth (21.4 percent) of intensive care patients.
Hundreds of Corona measure critics at gatherings in Franconia
Wednesday, December 29th, 9:53 p.m .: According to the police, up to 400 opponents of the corona measures took part in a reported meeting in Würzburg on Wednesday evening. At the same time as this protest on the Lower Market, the Green Youth gathered on the Upper Market with around 100 people.
The strict separation of the two rallies enabled the police to ensure that the rallies ran almost smoothly, it said. However, against individual meeting participants of the critics of the Corona policy, proceedings were initiated for violations of the mask requirement. The leader of the meeting and the police had asked the participants several times to comply with the mask requirement.
Around 1100 opponents of the Corona measures took part in a meeting in Gunzenhausen in Middle Franconia. The registered protest in the city of around 16,000 inhabitants went on Wednesday evening without incident, as a police spokesman announced on Thursday. Around 450 people gathered in Ebern (Haßberge district), and 200 in Nittenau (Schwandorf district). The meetings were peaceful.
Regardless of a current ban on gatherings, a few hundred opponents of the current Corona policy marched through the city center in Munich on Wednesday evening. The police stopped them in several places. Several groups were stopped and the personal details were recorded, the police said.
Verdict: 2-G rule does not apply to clothing stores in Bavaria
Wednesday, December 29, 5:33 p.m .: Clothing stores in Bavaria, like bookstores or flower shops, serve to “cover daily needs” and are therefore not subject to the 2-G rule. The Bavarian Administrative Court decided on Wednesday. The decision is final. At the beginning of December, the state government decreed that only those who had been vaccinated and those who had recovered had access to the Bavarian retail trade. Shops “to cover daily needs” are excluded.
Clothing stores are not listed as an exception in the regulation. According to the judgment of the judges, however, they too are exempt from the 2-G rule, “because their importance for the general public does not take second place to that of shoes, books, cut flowers or gardening tools and the need for clothing can arise on a daily basis”. The Administrative Court therefore rejected the urgent application by a clothing company against the 2-G rule as inadmissible: clothing stores were not subject to the restriction anyway.
Before Christmas, the judges had made it clear that toy shops were also exempt from this. How important and urgent a daily requirement has to be so that the business is not subject to the 2-G rule cannot be inferred from either the text of the regulation or the justification. In addition to grocery stores and pharmacies, the regulation names, among other things, book and flower shops, garden markets and Christmas tree sales.
Wrong vaccination certificates issued? Investigation against a doctor
Wednesday, December 29th, 3:43 p.m .: A doctor from Ingolstadt is suspected of having issued false vaccination certificates. The public prosecutor’s office and criminal investigation investigate, as the police said. A witness said that a doctor in her practice allegedly confirmed that numerous patients had been vaccinated against the coronavirus – without actually vaccinating them.
As a result, 14 objects in the Ingolstadt, Eichstätt and Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm area were searched three weeks ago. Blood samples were taken from 15 people and numerous cell phones and vaccination certificates were secured. The blood samples should be used to clarify whether the people have been vaccinated.
According to the police, the doctor is suspected of violating the Infection Protection Act. In addition, it will be examined to what extent the woman acted with the consent of her patients, if necessary.
Herrmann: Vaccination opponents sometimes with “considerable fanaticism”
Wednesday, December 29, 3:33 p.m .: Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) sees some “considerable fanaticism” among opponents of vaccinations and corona measures. The fact that some harnessed their children or even armed themselves in individual cases is “something that worries us,” said Herrmann on Wednesday in Oberaudorf. There are links to right-wing extremism, “where, as is well known, acts of violence must also be expected”. But he doesn’t see any terrorist quality.
Herrmann emphasized that the opponents of vaccination and corona measures are still a minority. This can only be seen in the fact that almost 80 percent of the adult population has now been vaccinated. This shows that “the great majority obviously sensibly sees it differently”. Nevertheless, the opponents must be taken seriously. There are some who have eaten up false information, some can be persuaded by arguments. Most of them also demonstrated peacefully. It is their right to take to the streets.
But more and more right-wing extremists and members of the Reich citizen scene mingled with the demonstrators and fished “in the dark” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/. The police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had increased their focus on this. The perpetrators would be held accountable. Herrmann welcomed the rapid proceedings in Schweinfurt, with which violent demonstrators had been quickly tried.
At the planned G7 summit at Elmau Castle near Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the end of June, according to Herrmann, this time, unlike the 2015 summit, there could be left-wing demonstrations as well as gatherings or actions by “lateral thinkers” and right-wingers.