Status: 04.01.2022 9:23 p.m.
Education ministers, health ministers, the expert council – proposals for the federal-state meeting are drawn up on many levels. This is all about Omikron. There is intense discussion of how a shortening of the quarantine could be regulated.
Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Hamburg – Omikron is already demonstrably predominant in a number of federal states. With the spread of the much more contagious virus variant, some federal states have already decided to tighten their corona requirements. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the current corona lag is as follows: The number of transmitted, reliably proven and probable Omicron cases has more than tripled within a week. 35,529 would be assigned to the new variant, according to an RKI overview. A week ago it was 10,443. The number refers to cases since November.
On Friday, the federal and state governments want to discuss further possible crisis measures in a large group. Until then, politicians and experts should collect proposals. What other countries are already implementing is already on the table: a reduction in quarantine times. This is to prevent that too many staff are absent in important supply areas due to the rapidly increasing number of infections.
Employers for quick quarantine rules
The Federal Government’s Expert Council has already given advice on this – so far, the results have not been made public. The RKI is apparently considering a recommendation to end the quarantine after five days – for infected people without symptoms and a current negative PCR test. In any case, the Federal Association of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) is calling for quick changes to the quarantine rules in order to be able to guarantee security of supply. For asymptomatic infected people and contact persons, a shortened quarantine must be possible if the operation of the infrastructure would be jeopardized. Work quarantines have already proven their worth – that is, quarantined employees work with special hygiene concepts.
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder called for quarantine regulations to be shortened, as in other countries. It is necessary to revise the current regulation. “With a rapidly growing distribution, we cannot quarantine the whole country at the same time,” said the CSU head of the dpa news agency. “The basis for this must be a scientifically sound assessment.” Above all, it is important to know whether the milder course will reduce the burden on the hospitals.
Dahmen warns of a general reduction in quarantine
Shorter quarantine times are under discussion, especially in important areas such as clinics, police, fire brigade, emergency services, telecommunications, electricity and water supply. The green expert Janosch Dahmen said in ARD morning magazine: “I am generally very cautious about shortening the quarantine.” He could imagine it in specialized technical professions. “But now exempting the nurse who now takes care of heart attacks or strokes from quarantine rules, who then may infect other patients, opens too many doors for Omikron.”
The German Foundation for Patient Protection required daily laboratory tests for hospitals, nursing homes and outpatient care. “It needs a PCR test prioritization for professions that take care of people in need of care and the sick,” said board member Eugen Brysch of the dpa news agency. The immunologist Carsten Watzl also told the dpa that it could “make perfect sense” for someone to test himself free after five or seven days – especially when it comes to critical infrastructure. But this can only be done seriously if it is accompanied by negative PCR tests.
Health and education ministers will discuss tomorrow
Currently, the following applies: If you have close contact with people who have been proven to be infected, you should be quarantined at home for ten days. This can be shortened to seven days with a negative rapid test and to five days with a PCR test. A distinction must be made between isolation: Those who are infected should be in isolation for 14 days after the onset of symptoms – those who have been completely vaccinated for five days if they are then symptom-free and negative PCR-tested. The guidelines are stricter for Omikron cases. According to the current RKI recommendations, contact persons of Omikron infected people should always be in quarantine – even if they have been vaccinated or have recovered.
As early as tomorrow, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and his colleagues from the federal states want to discuss the possibilities of reducing quarantines and formulate a recommendation for the group of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Prime Ministers. Also tomorrow the ministers of education want to interconnect. In many federal states, lessons start again after the Christmas break. They too want to make recommendations at the federal-state meeting – it is expected that the ministers of education will plead for keeping schools open despite the spread of omicrons.
Further tightening of access rules?
In addition, further restrictions are likely to be discussed at the Bund-Länder-Round. In Hamburg, the Senate will tighten access rules only for those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered from Monday. The municipal representative in the Expert Council, Stefan Sternberg, spoke out in favor of uniform rules – for restaurants, for example. “We see it in our circle that we have a real ‘gastronomy run’ in other federal states, in which – unlike us in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – you don’t need an additional negative corona test,” said the SPD district administrator of the Ludwigslust-Parchim district after the council meeting. He thinks this will also be an issue at the Prime Ministers’ Conference.