Today's corona news in 60 seconds
+++ Schools closed longer +++ Vaccine delay +++ App update +++ The stats +++
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, 30 December)
New cases in one day: 1,059 (1,287 Tuesday)
Total number of corona deaths: 1,247 (+34 over Tuesday)
🟢 R number: 0.55 (0.68 Tuesday)
🔴 New infections per week: 151,6/ 100,000 inhabitants (160.9 Tuesday)
🔴 Share of Berlin ICUs occupied by Covid-19 patients: 34.0 per cent (32 per cent Tuesday)
Source: Berlin's coronavirus status page
The lowdown...
Update update
We're taking a break until 4 January. We've been at this five months now and any of you learning German know how anstrengend translations and reworking German text can be. Guten Rutsch!
Schools closed until (at least) 17 January
Online schooling will resume for Berlin's students Monday but the city's top education official, Sandra Scheeres (SPD), Wednesday said it's likely children won't be able to return for in-class learning until after 17 January. Graduating classes will be the exception and will revert to hybrid classes, with some at-home and some in-school instruction.
No vaccine for Germany in the first week of 2021
None of Germany's 16 states will receive new vaccine shipments from Biontech/Pfizer until 11 January, Brandenburg health authorities said, citing a nationwide list of expected deliveries, which are being overseen by the federal government. Berlin health authorities are peeved at the difficulties because they had been planning vaccination schedules based on previous delivery promises.
Corona app update
The corona app you probably don't have on your phone has been updated to include a contact diary to simplify contact tracing in case you get the virus. Contacts can be exported from a phone's telephone book and then saved according to place and time. Should you get the virus, the phone will then help you tell everyone you've had contact with. Politicians hope increased functionality will boost acceptance of the app.
In case you missed it...
Some day this will all be over and earlier this week we asked our readers (and ourselves) what we're looking forward to when we finally have this virus behind us.
That's all for now, folks. Stay safe!
Yours,
The Berliner Zeitung English team
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