A district in Germany where there has been an acute outbreak of coronavirus cases at a meat-processing plant is being put back into lockdown, the premier of North Rhine-Westfalia said Tuesday.

State premier Armin Laschet said he was putting the district of Guetersloh, home to around 360,000 people, back under lockdown until June 30. The move comes after at least 1,000 workers at a meat processing plant in the area contracted Covid-19.

Bars, museums, galleries, cinemas, sports halls, gyms and swimming pools in Guetersloh will now be closed, and picnics and barbecues prohibited, according to Reuters.

Germany was lauded throughout the coronavirus crisis in Europe as a country that had seemingly managed to control the virus’ spread, largely through an organized and early contact tracing system, and to have kept the nationwide death toll relatively low.

Now, however, the country has seen a resurgence of cases due to several localized outbreaks in different parts of the country. The surge in infections prompting the reproduction or ‘R’ rate (which refers to the number of people that an infected individual goes on to infect, on average) to jump to 2.88 at the weekend (it had come down to 2.76 on Monday, and is a moving 4-day average which reflects infection rates about one to two weeks ago). Experts want to keep the R rate under one to be able to control and slow the spread of the virus.

The Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, collating Germany’s coronavirus data and reporting a further 537 cases Monday, bringing the total recorded to 190,359, said that outbreaks primarily in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony are primarily responsible for the increasing case numbers.

The RKI said that as well as outbreaks continuing to be seen in nursing homes and hospitals, outbreaks have been reported in several German states “including in institutions for asylum seekers and refugees, in meat processing plants and logistics companies, among seasonal harvest workers and in connection with religious events and family gatherings.”

The biggest contributing factor to the surge in cases has been an outbreak at the meat-processing plant in Guetersloh in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with by far the largest amount of coronavirus cases, with over 41,000, according to RKI data.

Over 1,000 employees at the factory, the largest such plant in Europe and run by German meat giant Tonnies, tested positive for Covid-19, the RKI said Monday. Some reports suggest more than 1,300 people are infected at the plant, where around 7,000 people are employed.

The plant was promptly closed and all employees (mainly Bulgarian and Romanian workers) quarantined, as well as their household members, as the authorities feared a rampant spread of the virus. All schools and day-care centers in the district were also closed and will remain so until mid-August.

Nonetheless, the outbreak at the meat-processing plant has caused a furor in Germany, with the country’s Labor Minister Hubertus Heil saying Sunday that the meat processing company should pay damages, according to public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

“There must be a civil liability of the company,” Heil told a Bild online broadcast, Deutsche Welle reported, with Heil reportedly adding that the company had “taken an entire region hostage” by the company, that he accused of violating the coronavirus restrictions.

The outbreak at the plant has put a spotlight on working conditions within the meat processing industry in Germany, but it is not the only area that has seen a rise in cases.

The RKI said Monday that a large Covid-19 outbreak in the district of Goettingen in Lower Saxony was traced to family gatherings and another, in Magdeburg in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, emerged in several schools that are now also closed. In Berlin, an outbreak there of 85 cases has been linked to members of a religious community.

Despite the easing of coronavirus lockdown measures in the country, Germans are seemingly reluctant to rush back to stores.

Speaking to CNBC, the CEO of behavioral science consultancy Innovation Bubble, Simon Moore, said the coronavirus pandemic has shifted consumers’ mindsets from a “gain” to “maintain” mentality.

Instead of seeking out ways to make the most of deals on goods, Moore explained that people were now more defensively minded because of the uncertainty created by the pandemic.

On Monday, Germany allowed smaller retailers of under 800 square meters to re-open, as long as they abided by social distancing and hygiene measures. There have been 153,129 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Germany and 5,575 deaths, according to latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Larger businesses, such as car dealerships, bike and book shops were also allowed to re-open. This also included Swedish furniture superstore Ikea.

In a Reuters report, Stefan Stukenborg, head of an Ikea branch on the outskirts of Cologne, said his store’s re-opening “was very relaxed, there were no lines, there were no crowds.”

Stefan Genth, CEO of the German retail federation Handelverband Deutschland, suggested this was likely to be the case for some time as consumer sentiment was at an “all-time low,” according to the translation of a statement published Wednesday.

He said this was partly down to uncertainty in the jobs market, prompting people to be more frugal with spending.

However, he also said guidelines about reducing the size of sales areas with barriers, for example, were inconsistent as they varied from state to state in Germany, which “unsettles” customers.

Italy, which has been the epicenter of Europe’s pandemic, also allowed some of its smaller retailers to re-open this week but store owners told CNBC that they didn’t expect business to be same as before Covid-19.

Despite the official easing of restrictions by some governments, Moore said that people would really be looking for “social proof” that others are returning to shops en masse before doing so themselves.

He explained that this was because people relied much more on gut instinct and emotion to determine decisions in a time of uncertainty.

The part of the brain that deals with numbers, facts and figures, which brands typically appeal to, is about a quarter of the size of the part responding to emotions, Moore pointed out.

“We’re much more non-conscious, emotional creatures than what we give ourselves credit for,” he said, citing research from a Harvard professor who found that 95% of our purchasing decisions occur in the subconscious mind.

Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, who lectures on consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, said that consumer behavior wouldn’t return to normal until people felt the threat of the virus had gone away.

She said the messages of social distancing, such as limiting the touching of surfaces and objects, were so engrained in people’s minds that it was still affecting consumer behavior.

British supermarket Asda has gone as far as to tell consumers to “pick up only what you intend to buy” when in its stores.

″(Governments) are not saying go out and behave as normal because the problem has gone,” said Jansson-Boyd said. “They’re kind of saying go out and try to be normal but the problem isn’t gone.”

This results in cognitive dissonance, she said, which is the mismatch between thoughts, feelings and actions causing stress and discomfort.