Rushing a way out of the lockdown can result in a new wave of coronavirus outbreak. During a session at the Bundestag today, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned regional leaders to slow down on lifting the restrictions.

Smaller stores and businesses in Germany have reopened this week due to some new decisions to ease the social distancing measures.

The country has a decentralized political system. Some of the 16 German federal states have decided to change the rules and slowly put an end to the economic stagnation by allowing furniture stores to reopen in North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to Chancellor Merkel, Germany is risking to spoil the recent achievements in dealing with coronavirus outbreak by reopening the country too quickly. She also added that, unfortunately, we are still at the beginning of the pandemic, not at the end, no matter how much we avoid hearing this.

The COVID-19 pandemic is obtruding our human rights and needs. Nevertheless, extended physical social distancing measures are more than necessary if the officials don’t want to risk the future of the country in the long term.

Some of the leading political figures in the country, however, disagreed with Merkel. The vice-president of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Kubicki said: “In the handling of the corona epidemic, the chancellor is on the verge of unlawfully assuming a higher authority.”

Eminent scientists like Christian Drosten, the director of the Institute for Virology at Charité hospital in Berlin said that it’s too early to ease the lockdown, and pointed out that reopening shopping centers and big businesses can lead to an even deadlier second wave of coronavirus outbreak, harder to track and control. 

Experts warn that the second outbreak can occur around May/June.

The lockdown exit strategy of the government, run into criticism by virologist Melanie Brinkmann, of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, repeating that we are only at the beginning of this pandemic, and no one should forget that.