The head of Germany’s disease control agency said Friday that the country has entered into a ‘nationwide state of emergency,’ because of surging coronavirus infections. Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, said regular medical care cannot be guaranteed anymore in some parts of the country because hospitals and intensive care wards are overstretched.

He called for urgent additional measures to tackle the rise in Covid-19 cases, which topped 50,000 for the third day running. “All of Germany is one big outbreak,” Wieler told reporters in Berlin. “This is a nationwide state of emergency. We need to pull the emergency brake.”