Lauterbach explains false interview statement with “technical” error

Germany corona infections

Lauterbach rows back after the interview – and refers to “technical” errors

Backtracked after an interview statement: Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach Backtracked after an interview statement: Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach

Backtracked after an interview statement: Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach

Source: Getty Images/Pool

In an interview, Karl Lauterbach claimed that multiple corona infections often resulted in an “incurable immune deficiency”. Now the Minister of Health is rowing back. The statement, he suggests, accidentally ended up in the interview.

BHealth Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has withdrawn an interview statement about the consequences of corona diseases and explained the mistake as a “technical transmission error”. In an interview published on Saturday with “Rheinische Post” Lauterbach spoke of an “immune deficiency that can no longer be cured”, which often occurs in people who have survived several corona infections. He cited studies, although he added that the findings “are not yet certain”. Numerous media took up the statement.

The science journalist Christina Berndt from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” criticized the statement. Berndt wrote that Lauterbach was discussing data that had not been published in scientific journals or in a so-called preprint in an opinion piece. The findings are immature, their authors wanted to do more research. One should be “very careful” with the interpretation of such data.

Lauterbach responded to the journalist’s article via Twitter – and suggested that the statement had accidentally ended up in the interview. There was a “technical transmission error” in the Ministry of Health, he wrote. “The quote was: ‘Studies now show very clearly that those affected often have to deal with an immune deficiency whose duration we do not yet know.’ There is currently no question of an incurable immune deficiency.”

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The minister did not explain exactly how the quote came into the interview. If a newspaper conducts a conversation with a politician, this is usually authorized. This means that the politician or his staff can read the interview and change the wording before it is published. The background to this practice is the right to the spoken word, which everyone can decide for themselves.


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