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Saarbrücken (dpa / lrs) - In Saarland, the corona-related contact restrictions will not be relaxed for the Christmas season.
This was announced by Prime Minister Tobias Hans (CDU) and his deputy Anke Rehlinger (SPD) on Friday after a special cabinet meeting in Saarbrücken.
They justified this decision with the rapidly increasing number of infections.
"It is already clear that Corona has thwarted our hopes for a carefree Christmas as possible and that there is no way around a hard lockdown," said Hans.
According to the previous planning, members of a household with a maximum of ten other people from three other households or “the family circle” should be allowed to meet in Saarland between December 23 and 27, not including children up to 14 years.
However, this announced regulation will not be implemented.
At the moment, members of one household in Saarland are only allowed to meet a maximum of five people from another household or the “family circle”, with the exception of children up to 14 years of age.
The new Saarland regulation on the corona pandemic will also not come into force on this Monday (December 14th).
The previous regulation will instead be temporarily extended in order to be able to incorporate the results of the deliberations of the federal and state governments on this Sunday (December 13th), it said.
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Hans had recently spoken out in favor of shutting down public life to a large extent, which he describes as a "hard lockdown".
"Going it alone by individual federal states won't get us any further in this situation, we need nationwide solidarity and uniform measures to get the situation under control again," he affirmed after the cabinet meeting.
The time period and details will be decided on Sunday together with the other states and the federal government.
Deputy Prime Minister Rehlinger said: "Even if it hurts, the measures taken so far have not been sufficient."
The goal now is to save people from the corona virus and save lives.
"We are therefore also ready in Saarland to cut social life down to a very large extent."
The state government agreed, among other things, on a more stringent test concept for retirement and nursing homes in order to be able to detect corona outbreaks more quickly.
From a nationwide value of 150 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days, tests are to be carried out twice a week in the care facilities.
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The concept is also to be adapted for schools in Saarland from next Wednesday (December 16).
This includes that more students should learn the subject matter at home.
However, childcare options in the school should be ensured.
Since the beginning of November, restaurants as well as cultural and leisure facilities have also been closed in Saarland, but the number of infections continues to rise at a relatively high level.
Corona information portal Saarland