Germany’s Merkel banks on Easter circuit-breaker to combat ‘new pandemic’ – Reuters

Germany’s Merkel banks on Easter circuit-breaker to combat ‘new pandemic’ – Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is extending its lockdown until April 18 and calling on citizens to stay at home for five days over the Easter holidays to try to break a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chancellor Angela Merkel said early on Tuesday.FILE PHOTO: A man walks along a closed shop at the main shopping street Hohe Strasse amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Cologne, Germany, March 18, 2021. REUTERS/Thilo SchmuelgenIn talks that ran deep into the night, Merkel pushed the leaders of Germany's 16 states to take a tougher stance to fight the pandemic, reversing plans for a gradual re-opening of the economy agreed earlier this month after a sharp rise in the infection rate.“We are now basically in a new pandemic. The British mutation has become dominant,” Merkel told a news conference.“Fundamentally, we face a new virus of the same kind but with very different characteristics. More deadly, more infectious, and infectious for longer.”Germany started cautiously easing restrictions earlier this month. But the spread of more infectious variants of the virus has pushed up cases, prompting concerns that hospitals could soon be overstretched without further curbs.The number of cases per 100,000 people over a week