Germany reported 25,000 coronavirus infections Wednesday — a record — with over 1,000 deaths in just the past two days. Chancellor Angela Merkel pleaded with Germans to limit social contacts over the holidays as she called for a new lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Chancellor Angela Merkel: “It hurts me. It really aches in my heart. But if the price of these niceties is that our fatalities are now at 590 people a day, then this is not acceptable, and so we have to tighten this.”

Merkel’s plea came as several European countries hard-hit by a fall wave of COVID-19 have shown significant progress flattening their infection curves after reimposing tough new lockdown measures.