Corona ticker: Retail warns of “horror performance” lockdown

Live ticker

Stand Date: November 30, 2021.

The Lower Saxony-Bremen trade association appeals to politicians to avoid blanket closings. The developments in the live ticker.

Before the federal-state round for the fourth corona wave, retailers in Lower Saxony are warning of overly harsh and blanket measures. “Above all, a complete lockdown is a horror idea for retailers in Lower Saxony,” said Mark Alexander Krack, managing director of the Lower Saxony-Bremen trade association, the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.

For Krack it is important to avoid a nationwide, blanket closure of the trade. Rather, regional measures linked to the respective incidence and hospitalization rate should be taken. The trade association pointed out that the first weekend in Advent in some city centers was much worse than in the first year of the pandemic.

The Corona crisis has worsened the situation of homeless and homeless people in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Homeless people are people without their own rental agreement, homeless people have neither a permanent place of residence nor accommodation.

According to estimates by the social affairs department, around 600 people in Bremen have no apartments, according to spokesman Bernd Schneider. According to him, up to 500 of the needy go to shelters on a regular basis. “Nobody has to sleep on the street.” The corona infection numbers are therefore relatively low among the homeless.

They also take advantage of vaccination offers.

Bernd Schneider, spokesman for the Bremen social affairs department

There are no large bedrooms in the Corona period, and if possible, people are accommodated in single or double rooms. This could be different in emergency shelters. According to the spokesman, homeless people with dogs have a hard time getting a place to sleep with their pet. “It is difficult to accommodate people with dogs. We do not yet have a solution for this,” said Schneider.

Unemployment among people with disabilities in Bremen and Lower Saxony has increased in the Corona years. In Bremen, an average of 1,646 people with disabilities had no work in the first ten months of this year. That comes from the inclusion barometer work of Aktion Mensch and the Handelsblatt Research Institute. The number was higher than in 2020. Compared to before Corona, two percent more people with disabilities were unemployed.

In the current Corona situation, the Education and Science Union (GEW) appeals to politicians to consider possible school closings last. “That mass events take place and schools are closed, that is not possible,” said the union chairman Maike Finnern of the German press agency. “But if we see that the restrictions on cancellations or a reduction in mass events are not enough, then in individual areas you may have to think about sending schools to distance learning for one or two weeks.”

She spoke of individual cases in which this could be necessary. “But under no circumstances should it be closed for several weeks or months, as we did last winter.” Priority must be that everyone who could be vaccinated got vaccinated and that contacts were reduced. Schools should be kept in operation as long as possible.

In view of the increasing number of corona infections, the federal and state governments want to coordinate their further action in the pandemic again today. Planned a phone call between Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and her designated successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) with the heads of government of the federal states. The topic of 2G rules for shopping could also come up, as well as another general lockdown. Bremen’s Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte rejects this.

The Karlsruhe judges want to publish a decision on the so-called Corona Federal Emergency Brake for the first time today, with which curfews, contact restrictions and school closings were imposed nationwide in the spring to contain the pandemic. The court wants to clarify whether and to what extent the legislature may oblige the population to restrict contact and exit, as well as cause schools to be closed.

Image: Radio Bremen

This topic in the program:
buten un within, November 30, 2021, 7:30 p.m.