Status: 01/30/2023 10:35 a.m
The corona measures are gradually coming to an end – and soon the mask requirement on buses and trains will also be coming to an end. Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach now took stock and acknowledged mistakes: Schools and daycare centers, for example, had been closed for too long.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach was critical of the corona policy in Germany. In retrospect, it was wrong to keep schools and daycare centers closed for so long, said the SPD politician ARD morning magazine.
In comparison, many companies were “relatively spared”, but the federal government “came in very hard” with schools and children. Other countries would have set their priorities differently. Germany’s approach could definitely be criticized.
“If there was a new pandemic, we would take a completely different approach,” Karl Lauterbach, Minister of Health, on the Corona rules balance sheet
Morning magazine, January 30, 2023
Often too little knowledge
“At the time, however, that was recommended by the scientists who advised the federal government,” explained Lauterbach. At the time, too little was known about the transmission of the virus. Therefore he thinks it is difficult to “ask for forgiveness”. At the time, people simply didn’t know any better, and the level of knowledge was often not good enough. In retrospect, the assumption that there were many infections in schools and daycare centers “did not prove to be correct in this form”. In order to prevent the spread, schools and daycare centers were sometimes closed for months during the first corona waves.
Lauterbach was critical of “irregularities” such as illegal mask shops or corona tests that were too expensive: “These are things that should never have happened,” he said.
“We learned a lot”
Looking to the future, Lauterbach was optimistic about a possible next pandemic: “We are much better prepared, we have learned a lot and we would approach it very differently.” In comparison to other countries with a population of a similar age, Germany also got through relatively well.
Lauterbach was not yet Minister of Health at the beginning of the pandemic, but was involved in important decisions as an SPD health expert in the joint government with the Union.