Go-it-alone German state lifts all lockdown regulations

Thuringia plans to lift every vestige of its lockdown — including a ban on mass gatherings and an obligation to wear facemasks in shops.

A participant in a rally against the government’s coronavirus lockdown measures wears underpants as a face mask in Frankfurt, Germany. Picture: AP

A region of Germany has drawn heavy criticism for its plan to ­become one of the first in Europe to abolish coronavirus restrictions wholesale and replace them with non-binding advice.

The eastern state of Thuringia plans to lift every vestige of its lockdown — including a ban on mass gatherings, an obligation to wear facemasks in shops and a requirement to stay at least 1.5m apart in public — from June 6.

Its left-wing Chief Minister has been accused of “trivialising” the threat from the disease only two weeks after the infection rates in two of its counties breached a ­national safety limit set by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Germany has largely got its coronavirus outbreak under control, with an average of 48 deaths and 535 new confirmed cases each day in the past week. Yet several dense clusters of new cases, including more than 100 people who were infected at a single church service in Frankfurt last Sunday, have shown the slender margins for error.

The measures to suppress the pandemic now vary substantially across Germany’s 16 states after a harmonised strategy led by Ms Merkel fell into disarray.

Bodo Ramelow, Thuringia’s Chief Minister and a member of the Left party, on Monday announced he would use this freedom to “end the general lockdown”. He said he would place his trust in people’s “sense of responsibility for themselves”.

When counties record more than 35 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in a week — the lower of two national thresholds established by Ms Merkel — they will “trigger an alarm system” and a partial return to lockdown.

“The virus has changed us and no, the danger is not over, and all the precautionary measures and everyday practices to which we have had to accustom ourselves, from the hygiene plan to facemasks, are just as important and meaningful as before,” Mr Ramelow said. “[But] trusting in the majority of the population and its responsible solidarity, I now want to take further steps to end the general lockdown.”

This approach would at a stroke give Thuringia one of the most laissez-faire coronavirus ­regimes in Europe. While Sweden has a similar emphasis on personal responsibility rather than regulations, it has banned gatherings of 50 or more people and imposed other restrictions.

Mr Ramelow’s experiment was rejected by politicians across the spectrum. Saskia Esken, joint leader of the centre-left Social Democratic party, said while the idea sounded appealing, it was destined to fail. “The reports of hundreds of violations of the [1.5m] distance requirement are worrying,” she told Die Welt. “It seems people still need clarity, certainty and guidance through national rules on things such as hygiene, keeping distance and limiting contacts.”

Tobias Hans, Chief Minister of Saarland and a senior figure in Ms Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, said it was “not our job in politics simply to satisfy people’s yearnings”.

“We have to give people reasons to be hopeful, for instance regarding … the ability to spend your leisure time with people from more than one other household, but for all that we’re easing the restrictions, we still need rules fixed by the state so that people stick to the requirement to be cautious.”

There has also been unrest from within Mr Ramelow’s governing coalition in Thuringia. A senior politician from the Social Democrats, his main ally, said the remarks had “unleashed great confusion all over the place”.

Mr Ramelow’s economics minister, from the same party, gave the idea only qualified support.

Other German states have drawn up less radical plans to allow schools, bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms and swimming pools to reopen this month.

The Times