On 3 March, the Conference of Prime Ministers and the Chancellor decided to extend the current shutdown measures until 28 March. Simultaneously, relaxations will come into force in 5 steps. Here you can access the text of the resolution in German.

On 22 March, the Round Table will discuss the opening perspectives for further areas, including events. This will take into account the infection situation, taking into account the testing strategy that has been launched, vaccination, the spread of virus mutants and other influencing factors.

In the future, the rapid and self-tests now available and the increasing amount of vaccine will complement and replace the previous pandemic control measures (Hands-Face-Space rule, regular ventilation, contact tracing).

Public pressure to normalise economic and social life is mounting, and policymakers are responding.

Concerns about the effects of the shutdown measures on the viability of the economy are intensifying.

At the beginning of February, about 40% of Germans were for and against the measures adopted by the federal government and the Conference of Länder Prime Ministers. At the end of February, there are clearly more opponents than supporters. This was the finding of the latest edition of the Corona Monitor. Polls published in leading media such as FAZ and Spiegel show the same tendency.

It remains to be seen how the implementation of the opening strategy will affect the incidence of infection and people's inclination to meet at a B2B trade fair.

People clearly want to meet again, also at trade fairs. This is one reason why those politically responsible are looking for ways to more or less carefully normalise public life.

With the 22nd of March, there is now a precise target date at which the Federal Government and the Conference of Prime Ministers want to decide when and under which conditions (keywords: rapid tests, hygiene concept, vaccinations) events can be approved.

As things stand today, one cannot be sure that it will be possible to stage a trade fair in the first half of 2021. However, one cannot say with certainty that it would be impossible or pointless either.

Therefore, we are constantly monitoring the situation and further developing our hygiene and safety concept, which has already been successfully tested at Coiltech Italia 2020. We consider the availability of rapid and self-tests and make use of the time until 22 March to find out the feasibility for Coiltech in Ulm. As soon as the results are available, we will publish them on our website.

The ability to organise a trade fair technically or to get permission to do so is one thing.

However, it is equally important that visitors and exhibitors feel comfortable with the idea of socialising with others at a trade fair and that they, therefore, come actually attend the event.

In many conversations with the coil winding community and also in our survey among exhibitors and visitors in December "Experiences with online trade fairs in 2020", we got the impression that there is a widespread desire to be able to meet face to face again soon at a focused trade B2B exhibition and conference like Coiltech.

We will systematically verify this impression over the next few weeks. To this end, we will conduct a telephone survey among a representative selection of visiting companies. You can take part in this survey also as an online participant. We will evaluate the results of this poll separately according to collection (online/telephone).

The aim of this survey will be to find out, also in a quantitatively validated way, how potential visitors rate our hygiene and safety concept and what impact this may have on their intention to visit Coiltech Deutschland in May.