Germany is struggling with the subject of compulsory corona vaccination. There should be a general one at some point, but the project is not making much headway in the Bundestag. So far, only a so-called facility-related compulsory vaccination for the healthcare system and care has been decided. But even whether that will come now seems questionable. Bavaria was the first federal state to announce on Tuesday that it would not implement it for the time being; the CDU demands the same. It is the preliminary culmination of a whole series of attempts to bring the project down. A review.
December 10, 2021
Other countries such as France have had them for months, now partial vaccination for certain professions is also coming in Germany. To be more precise: So that unvaccinated people can still get their shots, she will come on March 15, 2022. Anyone who works in a clinic or doctor’s office, a nursing home or birth center for an emergency or nursing service must prove from then on that they are against the Coronavirus vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19. Political approval is broad: In the Bundestag, 571 MPs vote in favor of the new traffic light coalition’s draft law, 80 against, and 38 abstain. The Bundesrat, in which the governments of the 16 federal states sit, even agreed unanimously in its special session.
Nevertheless, criticism of the project had been voiced in the weeks before: on the one hand, the general question of whether it is permissible to prescribe a specific vaccination for people. Secondly, there is concern that employees could resign as a result, which could further exacerbate the large shortage of medical specialists and nursing staff. And finally, it’s not entirely clear what happens if a nurse refuses to be vaccinated: will he then be warned, will he have to be fired? The law remains vague here: the local health authorities should be able to impose bans on such people; In cases of doubt, they should also determine whether someone is really vaccinated against Corona or not. These regulations will become even more important in the coming weeks.
Mid December 2021
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) long ago held out the prospect of a general obligation to vaccinate in February – actually before the facility-related one comes into force. And because of this general rumblings are now beginning in his coalition. Bundestag Vice-President Wolfgang Kubicki of the FDP, for example, opposed it and found supporters. Some of them argue that the vaccination requirement for doctors and nurses was correct, but the general requirement overshoots the mark. Both debates can hardly be separated from each other.
December 25, 2021
Politics is in the Christmas break, the debate is quiet. Only the Bavarian Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) speaks up and calls for general vaccination and harsh penalties for those who refuse. It must come almost simultaneously with the facility-related one in March, because of equal treatment. Otherwise, many employees in the health and care professions felt stigmatized. Bavaria will still play an important role in the debate – just a completely different one than in December.
beginning of January
Is there now a threat of a major staff exodus in nursing homes and clinics? Operators and unions are unsure, the signals are contradictory. Advertisements from unvaccinated nurses who are said to be looking for a new job from mid-March keep appearing in newspapers and advertising journals. Sometimes there are dozens in one issue. Research by journalists shows that some advertisements actually come from nurses who are unwilling to be vaccinated, but many are made up.
mid-January
Associations complaining about ambiguities in implementation are increasingly speaking up. What happens to unvaccinated employees between March 15 and a possible ban on work by the health department? asks the German Hospital Society. Are they allowed to continue working for that long, are they to be released? The Verdi union says clearly that they must not be dismissed. Accordingly, members will also be supported in court.
The duality of general and occupational vaccinations also seems to concern many of those affected. An example of this is the Association of Nurses in Bavaria, which spoke up on January 18th and called for the facility-related to be suspended and instead a general one to be decided. Because the majority of employees in care are vaccinated and boosted anyway, they see compulsory vaccination only for them as an expression of fundamental distrust, says association leader Georg Sigl-Lehner.
22nd of January
The federal states are responsible for implementing compulsory vaccination. And they are now arguing with the federal government about how this should be done. Most do not want to clarify this themselves, but are calling for a nationwide uniform procedure. The federal government must present “legally secure criteria” – for example for the question: who checks the evidence of the employees? In a joint video conference of all health ministers, however, there is “no agreement with the federal government”. According to the protocol, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) argues that he can only give advice, not “create the conditions for implementation”, since the competence for this lies with the federal states.
January 24th
Chancellor Scholz and the Prime Ministers of the federal states meet via video. Their joint statement later states that they want to promote vaccination more intensively, and that they are sticking to the idea of a general obligation to vaccinate. There is not a word in it about the facility. Just this much: The federal states want to collect how high the vaccination rate is in the corresponding facilities, the federal government is examining “the possibilities of nationwide monitoring”.
In Bautzen on the same evening, the appearance of a CDU local politician caused a stir: Udo Witschas, the deputy district administrator, said during a speech: “If you ask me what the health department of the Bautzen district will do from March 16th, then we will not ban our employees in the nursing and medical field from working or entering.” He is cheered, right-wing extremists also spread the video of his speech. The next day, Witschas let it be known that he had been misunderstood: he had not questioned the legal situation, but he still insisted on suspending or lifting the facility-related compulsory vaccination.
late January/early February
Since the federal government does not want to present any enforcement rules, the Bavarian state government is getting used to the idea of having to do this yourself “so that the supply is not endangered”, as Health Minister Holetschek says. Simply unloading this “at the already highly burdened health authorities or employers” is not possible.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the district administrators are now writing to their prime minister that their health authorities cannot implement compulsory vaccination. They are overloaded. The President of the Association of German Cities, Markus Lewe, also complains that many procedural issues are unclear: “Everyone is poking around here at the moment.” The district administrators in Saxony are calling for the introduction of compulsory vaccination to be postponed, and the hospital company is demanding transitional periods.
February 7th
The first prime minister goes off the shelf, it’s the Bavarian: Markus Söder announces “most generous transitional regulations” for his country and openly admits that this means in fact that the facility-related compulsory vaccination will be suspended – possibly for months. Supported by the Greens and the health politicians of the SPD, Lauterbach criticizes this sharply: Bavaria must also take the law seriously, it is about protecting people at risk and about the credibility of politics.
But CSU boss Söder is not alone in this: just four hours after him, CDU boss Friedrich Merz also calls for the obligation to vaccinate in health and care to be suspended. That is the “very unanimous opinion” of the CDU leadership, because the federal government leaves the institutions and their employees alone, says Merz. And for him, February 7th seems to be the start of the exit from the whole sensitive subject of compulsory vaccination: “We have to rethink how we deal with this subject of compulsory vaccination.”