Debate on mandatory isolation: Lauterbach defends voluntary quarantine

Health Minister Lauterbach has to take it. There has been severe criticism because of the new rule that people infected with corona will no longer have to be quarantined from May 1st. Now he has explained why he thinks that is fundamentally correct.

The planned end of the obligation to isolate for people infected with corona from May has met with a mixed response. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach considers the specification to be fundamentally correct. “That has nothing to do with the question of whether we open more or less,” said the SPD politician in Berlin. It is about “a technical improvement that will give the health authorities more options to deal with the pandemic”.

With the currently high number of cases, orders are very often incomplete or too late when the quarantine has already expired. Many offices are currently no longer able to carry out preventive tasks in combating the pandemic – such as identifying major corona outbreaks or chains of infection.

Fixing this is the reason for the changes. “This is all about restructuring the totally overburdened health authorities so that they can do the work that is most important now,” he clarified.

The order of the health department is no longer applicable

The health ministers of the federal and state governments had agreed at the beginning of the week that infected people and contact persons would generally only have to be in isolation or quarantine voluntarily and for a short period of time from May 1st. In the future, infected people will be “strongly recommended” to isolate themselves for five days and avoid contacts.

It should apply accordingly to contact persons of infected people. There is no order from the health department. Stricter requirements should remain for employees in healthcare and care who have become infected – with further orders and a negative test required at the end.

So far, the quarantine has usually lasted ten days and can be ended after seven days with a negative test. A formal order from the health department is often no longer issued.

“Sit at home instead of infecting more people”

Physicians, in particular, are upset by this requirement. The board of directors of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, Eugen Brysch, sees great dangers for people who are particularly at risk. “The message from the health ministers could hardly be more ambiguous,” he said. “On the one hand, the warning about the virus. On the other hand, the downplaying of the infection, which is more contagious than ever.”

The epidemiologist Hajo Zeeb also demanded that the obligation to isolate be maintained, at least for infected people. “If a person shows symptoms, then they should sit out the corona infection at home instead of infecting more people,” Zeeb told the editorial network Germany. An isolation requirement of five days should be observed because of the highly contagious omicron variant.

The head of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen, welcomed the planned elimination. “This is the right political step, because we cannot simply continue the state of emergency of the past two years indefinitely,” he told the “Rheinische Post”.

Freely assumed “contamination of the population”

The criticism from the Union is also clear. The CSU health politician Stephan Pilsinger said in the Bavarian radio, he thinks this easing is “quite absurd”. “It doesn’t make sense that people who have become infected (…) are still running around outside and infecting others”.

The parliamentary director of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, said that the combination of the elimination of the obligation to isolate and the recent relaxation of other corona rules “in plain language (…) amounts to an infection of the population”. Because “basically all protective measures” would be taken away.

Government coalition relies on responsibility

The FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr said he supports the plan of the federal and state health ministers. “Other European countries are also following this path”. Green parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge emphasized: “Even from May, anyone who gets infected with Corona should stay at home.” This is responsible action, even if there are no longer any legal requirements for it. It’s about protecting others from infection.