In the traffic light coalition, there is again a dispute about further corona policy. At the beginning of the week, several FDP politicians spoke out in favor of an end to the corona isolation requirement – and thus opposed the position of Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
The deputy FDP party leader Wolfgang Kubicki said that a discussion about the obligation to isolate was correct. “In my view, it is overdue, both epidemiologically and for reasons of personal responsibility, to let people make this decision again,” Kubicki told the newspapers Funke media group.
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Saai made a similar statement. Above all, he warned of staff shortages if the number of infections increased. “We will face enormous challenges in systemically relevant areas if we send masses of positively tested people without symptoms into isolation,” says Djir-Sarai in the Rheinische Post.
Anyone who has tested positive must isolate themselves for another five days
The trigger for the current discussion was a statement by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Andreas Gassen. At the weekend, he spoke out in favor of lifting all isolation and quarantine obligations relating to Corona. This should apply “until further notice”, said Gassen, because “this would alleviate the shortage of staff in many places”.
All people who test positive for the corona virus are currently required to isolate for at least five days. The isolation can then be ended, and it is “strongly recommended” to carry out a test to ensure that there is no risk of infection. Gassen’s proposal aimed to let people decide for themselves how they wanted to behave after a positive test: “Those who are sick stay at home. Those who feel healthy go to work.”
With the proposal, Gassen initiated an important debate, said the FDP health expert Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus Editorial network Germany. Vaccination protects many people from serious illnesses.
The coalition partners have little time left to reach an agreement
The Corona policy has already been the cause of severe tensions within the federal government on several occasions. Lauterbach has been negotiating with FDP Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann for weeks about a new infection protection law, which is due to come into force in autumn. In order to keep to the schedule, both must agree by this week at the latest. The negotiations were reportedly difficult recently. Already in the spring there had been a violent crash between Buschmann and Lauterbach because of the corona measures.
Even now, the Federal Minister of Health let it be known that, unlike the liberal coalition partner, he did not believe in Gassen’s ideas: “Infected people have to stay at home. Otherwise, not only will the number of cases increase even more, but the workplace itself will become a security risk,” wrote Lauterbach at Twitter. The green health politician Saskia Weishaupt also advocated sticking to the existing rules.