A math and held welcome germany is bracing for a much tougher pandemic lockdown set to begin in the coming days were expecting chancellor Angela Merkel and regional leaders to announce the details shortly when they conclude a video making a surge in the number of people dying from kofi 19th has forced them to take action soft lockdown imposed in early november failed to cut in fiction rights now the country faces hard choices as it goes into the Holiday Season for more im joined by our Political Correspondent hans brought hans the German Federal and state leaders are meeting now to discuss the situation given the numbers weve just heard a hard lock down seems almost certain. Yes indeed a hard locked on i think is a certainty the meeting is taking place more or less virtually in the building behind me the german chancellor Angela Merkel is there in person as are the chairman and the vice chairman of the conference of the regional leaders the 1616 regional states everyone else is participating by video link and the leaks from the document that they are discussing show that the knocked on is probably going to happen by wednesday there is some difference still whether this could be pushed back a little bit towards christmas what is also planned is that public consumption of alcohol is going to be prohibited the retail shops are going to be closed except those shops that supply essential goods and theres further restrictions on schooling schools are probably going to be restricted to home schooling and for new years eve fireworks are going to be prohibited the sale of fireworks is going to be prohibited so its a whole gamut of measures that has been discussed in the last few days and is being discussed at this moment in this Video Conference that is taking place right now and so on to the next preference for a hard lockdown seems pretty clear as for those leaks that youre hearing that are they likely to be any object is among the 16 state leaders. Well thats been the problem uncle america is a physicists he believes in numbers in the certainty of numbers the truth of numbers and many of the regional leaders look more towards their own region and there are quite big differences in the regions and northern germany for instance the numbers of infections are not that high and so the leaders from those regions feel that their people should have a little bit more leeway a little bit more freedom while the regions in the south of germany have much higher numbers and some of them have already decided on their own locked arms to be taking effect pretty much immediately