Just hours before President Donald Trump’s decision to restrict travel from the country and others in the EU free movement zone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that seventy per cent of the population of Germany could become infected with the coronavirus.
On Wednesday, Dr Merkel said that it is likely that between sixty and seventy per cent of Germans, some 58 million people, will contract the virus as there has yet to be a vaccine developed.
“The virus is in Europe, it is there, and we must understand that,” Merkel said in her first public address since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, while calling for “solidarity and reason” in the response to the outbreak, according to Deutsche Welle.
Dr Merkel said that despite her dire warnings about the coronavirus, she will not follow the lead of Austria and restrict travel from Italy, the BBC reports.
Last night, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will block the travel of all non-US citizens who have been in the European Schengen open borders zone in the past fourteen days. The travel restrictions will be enacted on March 13 and will last for thirty days.
The ban will apply to 26 nations in the European visa-free travel zone, such as France, Italy, Sweden and Germany, but will not include the United Kingdom and Ireland, which are not a part of the Schengen Zone.
“The potential for undetected transmission of the virus by infected individuals seeking to enter the United States from the Schengen Area threatens the security of our transportation system; infrastructure and national security,” a White House statement said.
Dr Merkel’s alarming warning came just hours before President Trump announced he was closing the United States’ borders to the European Schengen countries, and her words were slammed by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who accused the German leader of spreading panic.
“I don’t want to comment on the situation in Germany, although I believe such statements rather cause panic. In any case, we have adopted strong measures for such worst-case scenarios to be out of the question,” the Czech leader said.
On Thursday, the total number of Germans infected with the COVID-19 virus climbed above 2,000 and the death toll reached four.
A 67-year-old man in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg became the fourth person in Germany to die from the virus in Germany, health officials said. It was the first instance of a person dying outside the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the epicentre of the German outbreak.
The president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called on the people of Germany to change their routines in order to prevent the virus from spreading.
“We need to change our daily lives — not gradually, but right now,” Steinmeier said per DW.
“With everything we know today, we are looking at some very serious developments to come,” he warned, adding that he believes Germany will be able to cope with the virus becuase of its “well-functioning health system”.
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