Status: 05.12.2022 9:50 p.m
The countries want a uniform line in the corona protection measures. But they don’t agree on what that should look like. Minister of Health Lauterbach and the RKI want to maintain the rules on masks and the obligation to isolate.
The federal and state health ministers have not been able to agree on further changes to the corona protection measures. They exchanged ideas, but there is no common line, said a spokeswoman for the Saxony-Anhalt Ministry of Health, which currently chairs the Conference of Health Ministers (GMK).
Above all, an end to the mask requirement in local public transport is under discussion, but there are different views on this. Some countries wanted to extend the public transport mask requirement until the end of the year, others until after winter, the spokeswoman said. Some wanted to turn the obligation into a recommendation.
In the past week, the transport ministers of the federal states had already discussed this issue and agreed on a uniform procedure, but were also unable to reach an agreement. In long-distance traffic, on the other hand, there is a statutory obligation to wear a mask until April 2023.
Lauterbach and RKI against changes
According to the spokeswoman, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and the President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, advocated maintaining the rules on masks and the isolation of infected people. They expected more new infections again and referred to the high mortality rate, especially among older people. The RKI therefore sees no reason to change its recommendations for isolation. Contrary to these recommendations, several states have already lifted the obligation to isolate, including Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein.
Politics: Wearing a mask out of solidarity with children
Not only Corona, but also other respiratory infections are causing a tense situation in the health care system. Because of the tense situation in the children’s hospitals, especially due to the RSV virus, health politicians had called for masks to be worn out of solidarity if necessary. “We can do acutely what we practiced well during the pandemic: avoid infections and interrupt chains of infection,” said the FDP health expert Andrew Ullmann in the “Welt”. Government regulations are not required for this. SPD parliamentary group leader Dagmar Schmidt told the newspaper: “Everyone should now show solidarity, especially with the children.”
Children’s practices and clinics overcrowded
Pediatric medicine is currently being hit by a wave of respiratory infections, for which the RSV virus is primarily responsible. The spokesman for the Association of Pediatricians, Jakob Maske, said on Deutschlandfunk: “It is actually the case that the health of children and young people and their lives are at risk at the moment.”
Maske said that child and adolescent medicine had been saved particularly heavily for years. “We now have a completely normal increase in infectious diseases, as we see it every winter – and the systems are collapsing.” For example, seriously ill children have to be moved hundreds of kilometers from Berlin because there are no beds. According to Maske, the short-term transfer of nurses from normal wards to the children’s departments, announced by Minister Lauterbach, brings “nothing at all”: An adult nurse cannot care for a premature baby weighing 600 grams.
Lauterbach wants to make reform proposals
Lauterbach explained that in the next two years the children’s hospitals would each receive an extra 300 million euros. On Tuesday he also wants to make reform proposals to relieve hospitals more of the overall financing pressure.