To protect against a corona wave in autumn, the federal states should be allowed to impose mask requirements again from October. This is provided for in a draft of the Infection Protection Act, as the Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Justice jointly announced on Wednesday.
A mask requirement on buses, trains and planes should therefore continue to apply nationwide, as well as a mask and test requirement in hospitals and care facilities. The federal states should decide for themselves whether they also require masks in publicly accessible indoor areas. In restaurants and at cultural and sporting events, however, there should be exceptions for tested, newly vaccinated and recently recovered people.
According to the proposal by the two federal ministries, the states should also be given the opportunity to prescribe tests in schools, daycare centers and facilities for accommodating asylum seekers. A mask requirement in school is only planned if otherwise no regulated face-to-face lessons would be possible – and then only from the fifth school year.
If a country fears that its health system or other critical infrastructure will collapse, it should also be possible to wear masks at events outside if minimum distances cannot be maintained. Then there should be no exceptions for those who have been tested, recovered and vaccinated. The measures are to apply from October 1, 2022 to April 7, 2023.
“Germany should be better prepared for the next Corona winter than in previous years,” said Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD). A highly contagious omicron variant is also to be expected this autumn. “We’re going to have a lot of cases, but they’re not all as deadly as the Delta cases.”
Business closures are no longer an option
Lauterbach announced that there would also be four additional vaccines that could not be approved until September 9th at the earliest. Some of these vaccines protect against infection with Sars-Cov-2, he said – which has only been the case to a limited extent so far.
The corona drug Paxlovid is also available. “So overall we’re in a much better situation than last fall,” Lauterbach summed it up.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) emphasized the proportionality of the protection model presented. Germany is now in a “much better” situation than in the past Corona years. Radical measures such as school and company closures are no longer an option, he explained. In culture, leisure, sports and gastronomy there must be exceptions for tested, newly vaccinated and recently recovered people. “In these social areas, it is right to rely more on civil society taking responsibility for themselves – just like most other European countries are doing.”
Next, the cabinet will deal with the proposals of the two ministries. The Bundestag is then to decide on the new Corona rules from October.
Criticism came from Baden-Württemberg. “We would have hoped for more from the draft, since the decisive means, namely an extensive toolbox for the federal states, is not provided,” said State Minister of Health Manne Lucha (Greens) of the German Press Agency. He missed the possibility of introducing so-called 2G or 3G restrictions or contact restrictions in private and public spaces in extreme cases when the infection situation worsened. He also doubted the sense of mask requirement exceptions indoors for vaccinated and recovered people because they could be contagious. (dpa)