Status: 02/18/2022 11:47 a.m
Care and leisure facilities are repeatedly closed during the pandemic. This must be avoided, according to the Corona Expert Council. Family Minister Spiegel therefore wants to stick to regular tests for children and young people.
According to Federal Family Minister Anne Spiegel, children and young people should continue to be tested regularly for the corona virus. In order to protect them “as best as possible from infection, regular and binding tests must continue,” said the Greens politician to the dpa news agency.
Nevertheless, she unreservedly agrees with the recommendation of the Federal Government’s Expert Council that schools, day-care centers and extracurricular educational, leisure and sports facilities for children and young people must remain open.
Expert council sees priority for child well-being
In a statement on Thursday, the Corona Expert Council called for the operation of schools, daycare centers and other facilities for children and young people to be made as safe as possible and “to be considered at best as a last resort”. Access restrictions that exclude a large proportion of children and young people from attending age-appropriate leisure activities should be dropped at federal and state level, as far as the pandemic situation allows. “The current regulations for children and young people differ drastically and seemingly arbitrarily between the federal states.” The countries should make the rules uniform and based on the principle of maximum possible participation.
The well-being of children in the pandemic must be given high priority; they are heavily burdened. The so-called secondary burden of disease caused by mental and physical illnesses is described as particularly serious. This is triggered, for example, by lockdown measures, stress in the family such as fear, illness, death or loss of livelihood, loss of social participation or planning security. According to the expert council, children must be protected equally from infections and diseases as a result of the pandemic.
In addition, the Council called for, among other things, sustainable government funding programs to compensate for the adverse effects of pandemic measures on children and young people.
“We owe it to the children and young people”
Spiegel emphasized that the Expert Council had taken up an extremely important topic and rightly pointed out that society as a whole must focus its actions on dealing with children and young people responsibly during the pandemic.
“We owe it to the children and young people to improve the conditions for all young people to grow up healthy in the long term.” The statement gives important impetus that will be taken up.