Corona pandemic: decision on partial vaccination expected

The obligation to vaccinate in the healthcare system is intended to provide better protection for particularly vulnerable people. But she is controversial. The Federal Constitutional Court had rejected urgent applications. The decision in the main proceedings now follows.

Since mid-March, nursing homes and other medical facilities have had to report which employees have not yet been vaccinated. It turned out that in Baden-Württemberg, for example, less than two percent of these professional groups had no vaccination protection. Since then, the health authorities have been writing to the people concerned, and if they finally refuse, there will soon be a fine.

In February, the Federal Constitutional Court had provisionally approved the nursing vaccination requirement in an urgent procedure. Now the eight judges of the first senate are giving their final vote on the subject.

Urgent proceedings in February without success

Several hundred people have turned to the court because of the job-related vaccination requirement. The court processed the first constitutional complaint, which was received in Karlsruhe in December, as a kind of pilot procedure. Behind this first complaint are 46 people alone, and according to the court, they are not vaccinated or do not want to be vaccinated any further. Some have also recovered.

Also present: Heads of medical institutions who want to continue to employ unvaccinated people. And people who are receiving medical treatment from unvaccinated doctors and dentists, for example. In the summary proceedings in February, none of them were successful.

So far, there has been a lot of leeway for legislators

However, the judges had only provisionally examined and weighed the law: What causes more problems? If we stop the law or if we let it go? Now, when they finally decide, they also have to say something about whether certain professions have to put up with such a duty. So far, however, the court has made it clear in other decisions on corona measures that it leaves the legislature a wide scope in the pandemic.

Even in the urgent decision on occupational vaccination, they are already giving indications of how they assess the situation: the vast majority of experts said that the vaccination means protection, even at Omikron. If nursing staff become infected, it must be expected that they will pass the virus on to those they are supposed to care for, for example the elderly and the sick. And that is very dangerous, because the old and sick could possibly even die of Corona.

It is true that those who do not want to be vaccinated have professional disadvantages. Nevertheless: Even if it is possible that a vaccination has serious side effects, the dangers for the vulnerable groups, i.e. the old and sick who have to be cared for, are much greater.

Clearly formulated?

Sometimes the decision in summary proceedings does not correspond to what the judges finally say. But often they later confirm what they have previously decided. Therefore, it is not necessarily to be expected that the vaccination requirement for certain professions will now be overturned.

The eight judges were only dissatisfied in one point during the summary proceedings: the law was not formulated clearly enough. There are too complicated references to other regulations. Very likely that they say here: Please be clearer here.