Absolute record of daily infections in Germany, which for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic exceeds 50 thousand cases, with 50,196 infections in 24 hours.

The country is in full emergency, even the number of deaths has been on the rise, over 200 for days now.

The soft line of the past few weeks will therefore be set aside. The first drastic signal comes from Berlin, where the local Senate has decided to keep unvaccinated people out of bars, restaurants, cinemas and public events, announcing that the negative test will no longer be valid over the age of 18.

On the one hand, it pushes with the vaccination campaign, with experts calling for the obligation for some categories, violating what is a real taboo in a country where even early childhood vaccines are not binding.

On the other side, the lockdown nightmare returns. "The country is in a real emergency", warned the virologist of the Charité of Berlin, Christian Drosten, who added a disturbing estimate: "If we do not act immediately we could have another 100,000 deaths. And the forecast is cautious. ". A key figure in Angela Merkel's government, Drosten called a new reduction in contacts "inevitable" and raised the need to "go back to measures that we hoped we had left behind, let's face it: lockdown measures".

A big problem for German politicians, who have been repeating for weeks to "exclude" new closures.

"The pandemic is spreading dramatically", said Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, making it clear that the chancellor wants a meeting "as soon as possible" between the state and the regions to establish new measures.

In this dramatic situation, Italy is seen as a model: "Our share of vaccinated people is not enough, with an increase of 10-15% the incidence would be lower, as shown by the data from Italy, Spain and Portugal", Seibert said.

Among the measures under study, the Green pass in the workplace (in Germany it is called the "3G" model) and the "2G" model (ie only vaccinated and cured, excluding the possibility of a tampon) in various places and public events.