G as in occult science? Anyone who has taken a closer look at the “G-Rules” during the pandemic will find this thought to be obvious. In the beginning, the handy 3-G rule – vaccinated, recovered, tested – determined everyday behavior. The 2-G rule was also relatively easy to understand, for example when it says that you have to be twice vaccinated to visit a restaurant or have fully recovered from Covid-19. It became more complicated with the introduction of 2 G Plus, when people who have been vaccinated twice and those who have recovered also have to show a booster vaccination or a current negative test result. This is currently the prerequisite for attending cultural events in Bavaria. With one decisive change: on Tuesday the Council of Ministers decided that in future those who have been vaccinated twice and have recovered from a corona infection after a breakthrough in vaccination will also be considered boosted.
According to its own statements, the state government is implementing what the virologist Ulrike Protzer and the virologist Oliver Keppler found in a study: that after an infection, despite a double vaccination, no booster is necessary from an immunological point of view. Or as Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) puts it even more succinctly: “Every infection is a vaccination.” For people who have been infected with Corona despite having been vaccinated twice, the “boosted” status brings some relief.
However, those who received the first vaccination with the vaccine from Johnsson & Johnsson must continue to face disadvantages. According to the Ministry of Health, another vaccination with an mRNA vaccine should be carried out after four weeks. And further: “This then counts as part of the basic immunization, not as a booster vaccination. The booster vaccination should take place three months later.” The booster status only applies from the 15th day after the refreshment. The Free State relies on a recommendation from the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko). In other federal states, however, a further vaccination dose is sometimes sufficient.
Although Health Minister Holetschek shows that he is not entirely happy with the current rules for Johnson & Johnson vaccinated people, Bavaria wants to adhere to them for the time being. There are “clear statements” from Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), “that the effect of Johnson & Johnson is so reduced that the second vaccination is just an extended immunization vaccination” and only the third vaccination has “the booster effect” Holetschek. However, you have to “look again at the intervals”, i.e. the three months that are currently between the second and third vaccination, according to Stiko. “Can you shorten it?”
What Bavaria is already shortening, as agreed between the federal and state governments, is corona quarantine and isolation. The duration of isolation for infected people and the duration of quarantine for close contact persons will generally be ten days in the future. After seven days, it is possible to test yourself free with a negative PCR or rapid antigen test – an infected person must be free of symptoms for at least 48 hours. A PCR test is mandatory for employees in clinics and retirement homes in order to end isolation or quarantine – alternatively, negative rapid tests must be submitted daily for five days. Schoolchildren as well as daycare and kindergarten children who have to be in quarantine as contact persons can in future be free to test themselves after five days using a PCR or antigen rapid test.
Contact persons who have had a booster vaccination, have been vaccinated twice for less than three months, have been vaccinated and have recovered, or have just recovered, will soon no longer have to be in quarantine at all. However, this rule will probably only come into force in the course of the week, once the federal government has implemented the necessary legal changes. So far, contact persons of a person infected with the Omikron variant have been quarantined for 14 days, with no chance to test themselves.