December 6, 2021: -German lawmakers have implemented new curbs for the unvaccinated and made plans to make Covid vaccines mandatory.

To encourage vaccine uptake, national and regional leaders agreed to ban Germany’s unvaccinated population from all non-essential businesses, such as bars, restaurants, and movie theaters.

Additional measures are also being introduced to curb the spread of the virus, including limits on live sports spectators, other tests for the vaccinated, and mask mandates in schools.

Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that 68.4% of the German population is completely vaccinated, slightly above the EU-wide vaccination rate of 66%.

On Thursday, over 1 million Covid vaccines were administered in Germany, although the vast majority of those were booster doses.

Over the last 28 days, Germany has the second-highest number of new Covid-19 cases in the world after the U.S. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the country recorded over 1.3 million positive tests in the previous four weeks and 6,222 deaths from the virus.

Thursday saw 73,209 new coronavirus cases in Germany, bringing case incidence up to 439 per 100,000 people, according to the Robert Koch Institute. In the previous week, a record 79,051 positive tests were reported in a single day.

However, on Thursday, 321 people were admitted to Germany’s intensive care units with Covid-19, with 21% of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients.

Both Germany’s DAX index and the pan-European Stoxx 600 index were trading slightly lower on Friday morning following the news that part of the country’s population would be excluded from engaging fully in the economy.