(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel faces further pressure to lay out a path to ease Germany's coronavirus lockdown after Finance Minister Olaf Scholz became the latest senior official to call for a quicker reopening of Europe's largest economy.
Scholz -- the vice chancellor and the Social Democratic candidate to succeed Merkel in September's election -- threw his weight behind proposals to move away from a reliance on using the seven-day incidence rate to manage Germany's pandemic and focus on ramping up testing.
As more aggressive variants spread, the measure of new infections has been inching back up, moving the country further from targets Merkel has set for loosening curbs. Her coronavirus cabinet, which includes Scholz, met on Monday to prepare for a critical meeting with state leaders on Wednesday.
Increased testing “must have an impact on what is possible in terms of moves to open up,” Scholz said late Sunday in an interview with the Bild newspaper. “It's not going to happen all at once, but there must be a step-by-step process that everyone can understand.”
To facilitate a faster reopening, he said he wants companies to test workers and citizens to be able to get free Covid-19 checks. His comments indicate a growing consensus in Germany to focus less on the incidence rate to determine pandemic policy.
Merkel opened the door to the move last week, saying testing could create a “buffer” to allow for opening above her target of 35 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days. The figure rose to 65.8 on Monday, according to the RKI public health institute.
Germany's outbreak receded steadily after peaking just before Christmas, but the downward trend has been halted for around two weeks, prompting fears that more virulent strains of the disease could trigger another surge in cases.
While some children have returned to schools and hairdressers were allowed to reopen on Monday, most of Germany's lockdown restrictions remain in place. With the pandemic-weary public growing restless ahead of national elections, some officials are keen to ease the strain, while others are more cautious.
Merkel and the state premiers are set to agree on a broad extension of current lockdown measures until the end of this month, including shuttered non-essential stores, restaurants, gyms and cultural venues, Business Insider magazine reported Monday, citing government sources it did not identify by name.
At the same time, officials want to lay out a timetable for a gradual easing of curbs beyond March that relies on reducing the incidence rate to 70, rather than 35, the magazine said. A broad extension of current restrictions to the end of the month is one option being considered, a person familiar with the discussion told Bloomberg.
Markus Soeder -- Bavaria's premier and a potential chancellor candidate for Merkel's conservative bloc -- warned against a hasty opening.
“The situation is unstable, and the numbers are rising again,” Soeder said on Monday in a virtual press conference with his counterpart from the state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer. “We should not lose our nerve now” and risk a third wave.
Instead, Soeder called on Merkel's federal government to change Germany's vaccine strategy, which would allow the immediate use of unused doses of AstraZeneca Plc's vaccine.
At Wednesday's meeting between Merkel and other state leaders, there could only be small opening steps and each would have to be secured with more widespread testing, Kretschmer said. Both Bavaria and Saxony have high infection rates in their border regions with the Czech Republic, where the mutations are spreading at a fast rate.
With the country's inoculation campaign slowly ramping up, the country's STIKO vaccination committee is poised to reconsider its decision not to recommend AstraZeneca's vaccine for people 65 and older.
“There will be a new updated recommendation very soon,” Thomas Mertens, head of the committee, said over the weekend. Last month, Germany decided to keep its recommendation for the vaccine to be administered only to people between the ages of 18 and 64, saying there were insufficient data on its effectiveness for older recipients.
More Than 241 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker
The situation across the European Union is looking increasingly alarming, after a stuttering start to the bloc's vaccination campaign. Italy is tightening restrictions in Milan, Turin and other areas, the Czech Republic will impose its toughest lockdown yet, and Germany introduced a test requirement at its border with the French Moselle region to tackle the spread of mutations.
Austria extended most lockdown measures for the majority of the country on Monday following government meetings with scientists, opposition parties and provincial governors in Vienna. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz precluded even outdoor dining until the beginning of April as incidence rates in eastern regions of the country doubled to about 200 over the last month. Only restaurants and cafes in the far-western province of Vorarlberg got permission to re-open from March 15 following a decline in infections.
Read more: Merkel Signals She's Ready to Rethink German Lockdown Plan
While arguing for a cautious lifting of restrictions, Scholz warned that Germany shouldn't move too fast and risk having to reimpose lockdown measures.
“What we cannot allow is an opening up and then shortly after have to close down again because we have miscalculated and the infection rates are rising dramatically again,” Scholz said. “But if we can somehow stabilize things and improve the situation with the help of tests and progress on vaccination, then we have more options.”
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Essential Business Intelligence, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice, Daily Fuel, Gold and Silver Prices and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
