The pandemic is going on its summer break, Karl Lauterbach should actually be having a good time. But even after five months in office, many are wondering whether the health minister is up to the task.
By Markus Grill
Klaus Ott and Angelika Slavik, Berlin
If you want to see Karl Lauterbach, you have to be careful not to trip over all the cables and tarpaulins that pile up in front of the elevator on the sixth floor of the Federal Ministry of Health. The building in Berlin’s Friedrichstraße is being built, and has been for ages. It was like that when Jens Spahn (CDU) was still the head of the house. At the time, he never knew what annoyed him more: the construction noise or the metaphor in the newspapers that health policy was just as much a major construction site as the house in which it was being made.