German states tighten virus rules as pandemic battle falters

BERLIN (AP) — Two German states moved closer to a “hard lockdown” Tuesday as officials warned that continued high coronavirus infections could overwhelm hospitals and that too many people were ignoring existing pandemic restrictions.

The governor of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, announced that schools and most stores will close from Monday until Jan. 10, as the eastern state recorded the Germany's worst infection rates.

Figures published by Germany’s disease control center showed the number of newly confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants reaching almost 320 in a week in Saxony — more than twice the national average of about 147.

In the neighboring state of Bavaria to the south, governor Markus Soeder urged regional lawmakers to back his government's decision to declare a state of emergency and introduce tough new measures including a nighttime curfew, more home schooling and stricter border controls.

“The numbers are simply not going down,” Soeder told parliament in Munich and warned: ”The second wave is worse than the first.”

Germany managed to avoid the high number of infections and grim death tolls seen in some other large European nations in spring, and continues to have a lower overall fatality rate than countries such as Britain, France and Spain. But while restrictions imposed in November have slowed the exponential rise in cases, the numbers keep creeping up.

The Robert Koch Institute, the country's disease control center, reported 14,054 newly confirmed cases in the past 24 hours Tuesday, taking the total since the start of the outbreak to almost 1.2 million. The number of COVID-19-related deaths in the country rose by 423 to 19,342.

“Every four minutes a person in Germany dies of corona,” Soeder told lawmakers, calling the outbreak...