German MPs vote today on a change to the law that will allow the federal government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to impose an emergency brake of overnight curfews and school closures to help curb the pandemic.The 22:00 curfew will only come in in areas with a seven-day incidence rate of over 100 cases per 100,000 while schools will be shut if it reaches 165. There have been 24,884 new cases in the past 24 hours but the incidence rate has fallen to 160.1.Only the state of Schleswig-Holstein in the north is below 100 – at 71.9 cases per 100,000 people.
Denmark has taken a big step in reopening this morning, allowing customers inside restaurants, visitors in museums and spectators back in football stadiums. One museum in Silkeborg in East Jutland even opened last night just after midnight.
Denmark's corona passport is key to the reopening, as it shows on your phone that you’ve been vaccinated, have had a negative test in the past 72 hours or had the infection in the past 180 days. Find out more here.
France will vaccinate some 400,000 people in 20 fields of work over a two-week period from Saturday. The list includes bus drivers, cab drivers and inspectors on public transport as well as refuse collectors, butchers and shop cashiers. Infections have begun to fall in France and almost 25% of the adult population (nearly 13 million) have been inoculated.
Spain’s health service will today start distributing Johnson & Johnson vaccines across the country after the EU’s medicines agency gave the drug its backing while listing the “very rare” side effect of blood clots. The country now has 3.45 million people vaccinated, more than have been infected since the start of the pandemic.
