Germany imposes local lockdown after virus outbreak at meat plant

The western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Tuesday put two municipalities back into lockdown until June 30 after an outbreak of the new coronavirus at a meatpacking plant. Guetersloh, home to some 100,000 people, and the neighbouring town of Warendorf, became the first areas in Germany to fall back under lockdown measures that had been gradually lifted since the end of April. State governor Armin Laschet, who had previously led calls for Germany to ease its lockdown restrictions, said bars, museums, galleries, cinemas, sports halls, gyms and swimming pools in Guetersloh and Warendorf would be closed, and picnics and barbecues prohibited. “We will lift the measure as soon as possible, when we have certainty about the safety of the infection,” Laschet told a news conference. “It is a preventative measure.”