In the debate about general vaccination requirements in Germany, the rifts between the traffic light partners are getting deeper. The apparently milder course of the omicron variant raises doubts in the FDP parliamentary group as to whether compulsory vaccination is the right remedy against the corona pandemic. “Omicron is changing the rules of the game,” said Stephan Thomae, one of the parliamentary directors of the FDP parliamentary group Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Now is not the time to just do anything and take the toughest measures possible just to show you are ready to act. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time.”
Thomae is thus reacting to statements by the virologist Christian Drosten, who described the omicron variant of the corona virus as an “opportunity” in dealing with the pandemic. Drosten told the Berliner daily mirror, sooner or later all people would have to be infected with Sars-Cov-2. “Yes, we have to get into this channel, there is no alternative.” However, Drosten emphasized that the virus had to spread “on the basis of vaccination protection anchored in the general population”, otherwise “too many people would die”. When asked whether life would ever go back to how it was before the pandemic, the scientist from the Berlin Charité said: “Yes, absolutely. I’m completely sure of that.”
Thomae demanded that the compulsory vaccination discussion had to be conducted “in peace and taking into account the latest scientific findings”. He also puts a change of course up for debate: “Before we vaccinate in the summer season with a vaccine whose effect may wear off again in the next winter season and/or be undermined by a new variant, we should ask ourselves whether it doesn’t make sense We’ll have to wait and see which mutation we’ll be dealing with next fall.” As with the flu, however, one must be able to vaccinate large parts of the population quickly and in good time.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) sees things differently. A return to a “normal life” is only possible if the vaccination gaps are closed, he told the SZ. He considers a way out of the pandemic to be possible “if there is compulsory vaccination that comes relatively quickly and is already effective in the fall”.
The traffic light partners under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) have agreed that compulsory vaccination should be developed from the middle of Parliament and put to the vote without party pressure. MP Dagmar Schmidt, who is working on the relevant applications in the SPD parliamentary group, specified initial considerations: “A vaccination requirement – if it comes – will be limited,” she said. “It’s about achieving basic immunity in the population. At the moment we’re assuming that three vaccinations protect relatively well. Then that would be it.”
She sees no reason to end the debate about compulsory vaccination with the omicron variant. “The vaccination rate is still too low,” she said. She was in favor of doing everything in persuasion again. “But we’re running out of time. Some people lack insight. We want to be prepared for what can be expected next fall.”