Berlin Mayor Michael Müller expects a strict three-week lockdown across Germany due to the rise in the number of confirmed corona infections.

On Friday, he is the chairman of a ministerial conference of the sixteen states on the fight against the coronavirus.

According to Müller, retail trade must be closed to a large extent. He thinks shopping people are a significant risk of infection. Müller, therefore, wants the lockdown to take effect before Christmas, on December 20, and not, as previously suggested in German politics, after Christmas.

The Social Democratic mayor wants a national lockdown and expects federal states with low infection rates to participate as well because there would be a national crisis.

In the Federal Republic, the federal states mainly determine themselves how they combat the virus. It often leads to disagreement and many different measures.

The state of Baden-Württemberg, for example, wants to impose strict restrictions on the population from Monday on its own initiative, such as a nightly curfew.