The parliamentary groups of the Union and SPD agreed with the federal government on Thursday that employers should be given the right to information about the vaccination or convalescence status of their employees – but only in selected, particularly endangered areas such as nursing homes. This emerges from the draft amendment to the Infection Protection Act, which the Bundestag is to pass on Tuesday. The corresponding formulation aid for the amendment proposed by the government groups was the Süddeutsche Zeitung before.
In addition to the vaccination query, turning away from the conventional incidence as the most important key figure in the fight against pandemics is the second central point of the planned change in the law. In the future, the incidence of hospitalizations should be decisive for restrictions in everyday life – i.e. the number of newly admitted Covid patients per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. Other indicators should also be taken into account – including the previous incidence in relation to new infections, the “available intensive care treatment capacities” and the number of people vaccinated. There are no specific thresholds for hospitalizations in the draft; the state governments are supposed to set them.
The farewell to incidence had been on the horizon for some time. The subject of vaccination inquiries, on the other hand, only came to the fore this week. The reason was the demand from employers to be able to ask about the vaccination or convalescence status of their employees in order to be able to adapt and relax the hygiene rules in the company. The latter would be possible soon, according to a corona occupational health and safety ordinance approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD). However, the new regulation does not provide for a right to information on vaccination status.
The draft now available states that employers will in future be allowed to process “personal data of an employee about his vaccination and serostatus” with regard to Covid-19, “in order to decide on the establishment of an employment relationship or on the manner of employment” . However, this relaxation of health data protection is limited to institutions and companies in which people particularly at risk from Corona are cared for or where many people simply come together in a small space: nursing homes and homes for the elderly, facilities for the disabled, accommodation for the homeless and asylum seekers, mass accommodation such as them for seasonal workers, care services, prisons and schools as well as day care centers, homes and holiday camps. Vaccination inquiries are already possible in hospitals, in outpatient care and in medical practices.
A prerequisite for the vaccination query in these areas is also that the Bundestag has determined the epidemic emergency – and that the query itself “to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease-2019” is required.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) made it clear on Friday that he would have liked a more far-reaching solution. “For example, for working in an open-plan office and for organizing work, it makes sense if the employer knows what the vaccination status is in each case,” he said on Deutschlandfunk. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) was also convinced “that further steps are necessary and necessary”. With regard to the health data protection of employees, the SPD, on the other hand, had rather slowed down in terms of the right to information on vaccination status. The solution that has now been found is a compromise between the two positions.