Breathe a sigh of relief after three years: Although the corona virus is still there, the pandemic has become manageable. For citizens, this means: hardly any restrictions.
Düsseldorf (dpa/lnw) – For the first time in 1073 days, people in North Rhine-Westphalia can live again without the Corona Protection Ordinance from this Wednesday. The 114th version expired on Tuesday and will not be extended.
For citizens, this means that they only have to observe a few protective measures under the Federal Infection Protection Act, namely the obligation to wear masks for visitors to hospitals, nursing homes, medical practices and comparable facilities. NRW Minister of Health Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) assumes that this law will only apply until April 7th and will not be extended beyond that.
Retirement and nursing homes in NRW are now no longer allowed to impose unauthorized visit bans with regard to corona infections. The State Ministry of Health has made this clear by decree. “Anyone who, as the head of a facility, imposes visit restrictions, visit bans and bans on leaving can be fined up to 20,000 euros,” it says. Corona measures such as mandatory tests for visitors, mandatory masks for residents and their isolation after a positive test are no longer applicable. Exceptions in individual cases must be approved by the municipal supervisory authorities.
The first Corona case confirmed in NRW on February 25, 2020 in the district of Heinsberg resulted in drastic restrictions on fundamental rights in the months and years that followed: closures of daycare centers, schools, restaurants, shops, cultural and sports facilities, social distancing and social distancing measures Isolation requirements and bans on visiting hospitals and retirement homes had demanded a lot from the citizens.
After more than 43.8 million corona vaccinations in NRW, society has achieved basic immunization which, from the point of view of those responsible in science and politics, allows a return to normal life. According to figures from the NRW Ministry of Health, more than eight million corona reports and almost 31,200 laboratory-confirmed deaths in connection with Covid-19 were registered in the most populous federal state.
In the meantime, the incidence is no longer detectable. In the past few years, the rate of new infections had been fed from the positive results of a total of around 33.5 million PCR tests. More than 252 million citizen rapid tests were not included. At the moment, however, hardly anyone can be tested.
Crucially, the course of the disease has also flattened out significantly among older people compared to the first few years of the pandemic. The initially feared overloading of the hospitals did not occur, Laumann summed up. “I’m so glad that we were able to give hospital treatment to anyone who needed it during the entire pandemic in North Rhine-Westphalia.” Doctors and nurses “worked well” beyond their powers and proved to be a “great treasure”.
The state government’s corona dashboard shows that in NRW only comparatively few patients with Covid-19 end up in an intensive care unit or even have to be ventilated, so that numerous corresponding beds are still available.