The German district of Gütersloh will be going back into lockdown after a new cluster of coronavirus infections popped up in a local meatpacking plant.
"We are going to reintroduce a lockdown in the entire district of Gütersloh," Armin Laschet, leader of the district's North Rhine-Westphalia state announced on Tuesday.
Some 1,500 new cases of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) have been detected in a Tönnies meat processing factory in Gütersloh, Le Soir reports.
Laschet said that the district's roughly 100,00 inhabitants could be tested for free for the coronavirus, according to reports by DW.
All schools and day-care centres in the district have been shut and whole residential areas are cordoned-off, Germany media reports.
The meatpacking plant employs a total of 6,650 workers, and news of the surge of infections coincide with reports that the infection rate in Germany had jumped from 1.79 to 2.88.
Germany's government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that authorities were taking the new outbreak "very seriously" and doing everything to contain it, SZ reports.
Mobile testing teams have reportedly been deployed to the addresses of the plant's workers, who must remain in quarantine with their relatives until at least 2 July.
Gabriela Galindo
The Brussels Times
