Berlin-Every weekday at 11am come to the Berliner Zeitung English Edition for the corona/Covid-19 news at a glance.
🚥 The latest corona stats for Berlin (tallied Wednesday, 11 November)
New cases in one day: +1,132 (Tuesday +1,554)
Total number of corona deaths: 321 (+7 over Tuesday)
🟢 R number: 0.74 (0.88 Tuesday)
🔴 New infections per week: 187.3 / 100,000 inhabitants (192.6 Tuesday)
🟡 Share of Berlin ICUs occupied by Covid-19 patients: 21.7 per cent (21.4 per cent Tuesday)
Meistgelesene Artikel
Source: Berlin's coronavirus status page
The lowdown...
Merkel: It's gonna be a hard winter
Speaking at an event with Germany's top economic forecasters, the German chancellor said, despite the positive vaccine news, "we'll be dealing with the second wave for the whole winter." Health minister Jens Spahn said it was too early to say whether the current "lockdown light" was the "wave breaker" he'd hoped it would be.
Meanwhile, the Robert Koch Institut said Wednesday that 18,487 new corona cases were reported within 24 hours – 3,155 more than the day before.
Fall-out from massive corona demo in Leipzig continues
Last weekend tens of thousands of corona sceptics took to Leipzig's streets – a coalition of Querdenker, rightwing extremists and hooligans. Masks and social distancing were non-existent. Bottles were thrown at police, journalists attacked - and police were powerless to enforce the rules. The fiasco once again raises the question of whether to allow such protests during the pandemic.
German justice minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD), said "freedom of assembly is not freedom of violence and to massively endanger others." Speaking to taz sociologist David Begrich, called the events in Leipzig a "foreseeable disaster".
Corona sceptic school teacher under investigation
The Berlin school board is investigating the first case of a corona-denying teacher. According to public broadcaster rbb, Rüdiger Borrmann, a teacher at a vocational high school in Wedding, has reportedly told pupils during class that the virus doesn't exist. On his YouTube channel, he can be found making statements such as, "Wearing a mask is not cool. Wearing a mask is dumb....what is it supposed to protect us from?....There is no virus. It's a modern swastika." Students sounded the alarm. Authorities are looking into whether Borrmann has crossed the line of what is acceptable speech in the classroom.
In case you missed it...
Since we launched the English Edition, we've written an awful lot about the corona pandemic and its impact on Berliners. You can find everything in one place - from practical information to features and interviews - here.
That's all for now, folks. Stay safe!
Yours,
The Berliner Zeitung English team
P.S. We're on Twitter and Facebook.