Today's corona news in 60 seconds

Berlin-Every weekday at 11am come to the Berliner Zeitung English Edition for the latest corona/Covid-19 news at a glance.

First, the official corona stats for Berlin (tallied Tuesday, 22 September)

R number: 1.13 (1.32 Monday)

New infections per week: 24.4 / 100,000 inhabitants (21.9 Monday)

Percentage of Covid-19 patients in intensive care: 1.3 per cent (1.3 Monday)

Total number of corona deaths: 228 (227 Monday)

Source: Berlin's coronavirus status page 

The lowdown...

Flushing money away

Goofy Charlottenburg bar Klo, German for toilet, Tuesday sued Berlin to recoup some of the €53,822 it says it lost by its forced two-month closure during the pandemic. Like with most cases, the argument is semantic but the judge said he would rule in three weeks and indicated at the end of the case that there might be some language in a special infection-fighting law to support the barkeeper's thesis, which would open the door to a flooded toilet's worth of cases. If you haven't been, the bar in Leibnitzstrasse is a WC-themed tourist trap and holdover from provincial West Berlin with bedpans and plenty of urine-coloured drinks. Once is more than enough. All the crap here.

You'll get 5,000 and like it

The city's other professional football club, Hertha BSC, failed in a bid to expand the number of fans allowed at home matches to 14,895 from 5,000 currently. The club wanted Berlin politicians to raise the limit to the Bundesliga maximum of 20 per cent of a stadium's capacity, but city lawmakers told news agency dpa that would be foolish with corona cases on the upswing (wish we could say that about both Hertha and Union's prospects). 

Don't make me stop this car and come back there

Berlin health minister Dilek Kalayci (SPD) met with the mayors of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Mitte Tuesday afternoon after the three districts became some of Germany's most corona-stricken regions. Nothing was decided but Bavaria has already attacked recent outbreaks with mandatory masks in public places, alcohol bans and (please only if super-necessary) two-day school and daycare closures. SPD health guru Karl Lauterbach told the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung masks should be mandatory at all public spaces anyway and Chancellor Merkel has called a meeting of the 16 state premiers for next Tuesday. Lawmakers may soon be making more laws. 

In case you missed it...

Janet Jackson recently posted a clip of him dancing and he's a perennial on every clubbing Berliner's Insta, now let Berlin's hardest partying, snappiest dressed elderly resident tell you about himself.

That's all for now folks. Stay healthy!

Yours,

The Berliner Zeitung English team

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