A German government spokeswoman has said the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, was in favor of a short nationwide lockdown to help stem rising coronavirus figures.

As Germany struggles to tackle a third wave of COVID-19 cases during a sluggish vaccination campaign, several state leaders have backed calls for a period of strict restrictions.

“Every call for a short, uniform lockdown is right,” said spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer. “Also, a common nationwide approach would be important here.”

The differing rules across the country’s 16 states “is not contributing to security and acceptance at the moment,” she added.

Demmer told reporters that Germany was seeing a growing number of intensive care patients.

“At the moment, we don’t have a particularly good data basis as far as the numbers of new infections are concerned. But the number of occupied intensive care beds speaks a very clear language. It is increasing very much, very strongly and very much too fast. Intensive care physicians are worried.”

“The health system is under intense pressure,” she said, underlining a 5% increase in intensive care bed occupancy in just 24 hours.

“We need a stable incidence below 100,” she said, referring to Germany’s number of new COVID-19 cases over seven days per 100,000 inhabitants.

Germany recorded almost 10,000 new infections nationwide and a seven-day incidence rate of 101.1 on Wednesday, though the Robert Koch Institute health agency warned the real number could be higher because of a lag in reporting after the four-day Easter weekend.