Vaccine holdouts in Germany have been ordered into a new nationwide lockdown that will see them banned from entering all restaurants, bars, cinemas, gyms, concerts, and non-essential shops—including the nation’s traditional Christmas markets. The special measures for unvaccinated people were already in force in several German regions, but, on Thursday, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that they will be extended to apply to the entire nation. “Culture and leisure nationwide will be open only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered,” Merkel said. “We have understood that the situation is very serious and that we want to take further measures in addition to those already taken.” According to Reuters, almost 69 percent of the German population is fully vaccinated, but virologists have blamed an intense new fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic on the unvaccinated. On Thursday, Germany recorded more than 73,000 new COVID infections and 388 deaths.
