By Birgit Buerkner
Corona vaccination has been compulsory for employees in healthcare professions since mid-March. But the implementation is hardly possible for the health authorities.
► A BZ request resulted in: Most offices are unable to check the data reported by employers and initiate sanctions.
The Bundestag had decided on the so-called facility-related vaccination requirement for employees in hospitals, nursing homes, rescue services and doctor’s offices in order to protect particularly vulnerable people from infection.
The survey shows that some offices still do not know how many unvaccinated people in the industry there are in the district and have not been able to take any action.
“There are no figures for this,” says a spokeswoman from Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, for example. And: “So far, no consequences have been imposed.” medical Nicoletta Wischnewski says: “No information possible.”
Some districts are further along in the implementation. “In the central health department, two people are considered unvaccinated. These work without client contact, ”says Mittes City Councilor for Health Christoph Keller (36, Left). In Lichtenberg there are 725 reports of unvaccinated people, the tests are running. “An entry ban was issued for an employee of the Lichtenberg district office,” says the responsible officer Maximilian Schirmer.
There are around 400 reports in Neukölln. “For every person reported, the office must carry out a so-called risk assessment,” explains Dr. Nicolai Savaskan (48), board member of the doctors of the public health service Berlin-Brandenburg. “It has to assess how high the risk is for the vulnerable group if the employee is not vaccinated.”
Neukölln’s medical officer Nicolai Savaskan Photo: Stefanie Herbst
This is not possible in most districts. “The majority of the health authorities have not received any additional and, above all, no technically qualified staff for this task,” says Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf’s public health officer, Wischnewski. “Medical expertise is required to assess whether someone can be vaccinated or not.”
The doctors in the health department are entrusted with other important tasks and are not available for this additional task. In addition, qualified employees with knowledge of administrative law would also be required to draw up sanctions.
Speaker Schirmer from Lichtenberg says: “The pandemic has ensured that other mandatory statutory tasks had to be left behind. These are currently being gradually resumed. There is no additional capacity.”
The Spandau district office also says: “This additional task cannot be managed by the Berlin health authorities because the necessary structures with understaffed staff in the medical, administrative and legal areas were not created in Berlin.” Priority is given to the collection of data on Covid-19 and monkeypox, school entrance examinations and the inspection of medical facilities.
Another task was passed on to the health authorities by the federal government without even enabling them to fulfill it.
