Several federal states are pushing ahead and ending the isolation requirement for people infected with corona. For Friedrich Merz, the situation is clear: After thinking about it for a long time, he finds the process “responsible”. Health Minister Lauterbach accuses the CDU leader of “siren alarmism”.
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz considers the decision of several federal states to remove the obligation to isolate people infected with corona to be justifiable. “When I first read the message, I had a certain uneasiness,” Merz told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “On reflection, however, it seems to me to be responsible to proceed as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein are now doing.” Corona rules are only required to a “very limited extent”, said Merz.
Anyone who has been infected with the corona virus no longer has to go into isolation everywhere in Germany: Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg had abolished the corresponding regulation on Wednesday, Schleswig-Holstein will follow today. Hesse had also announced this, but the time for this is still open. The action taken by the federal states was criticized by patient advocates and trade unionists, among others.
Above all, there were calls for a joint approach by the federal states. “The time when there was a high risk of infection with a severe course of the disease is over,” Merz told the Funke newspapers. “We should also try to return to a largely normal life as quickly as possible – even with Corona.” Merz said he did not share the “almost siren-like alarmism” of Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. “We should return to normality and officially declare Corona over by spring next year at the latest.”
DGB board member Anja Piel told the Funke newspapers that she was “shocked that the four federal states are daring to go it alone with regard to the obligation to isolate”. She recommended that employees “report incapacity to work with infectious diseases in accordance with the applicable rules and voluntarily drastically reduce contacts in their private lives”.
Kassenärzte boss Andreas Gassen criticized in the editorial network Germany (RND) an emerging patchwork quilt in the protection rules. “All of this suggests that politicians should now think about an orderly and uniform transition to treating Corona like other endemic diseases, even if the WHO has not yet declared the pandemic to be over worldwide.”
The health policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Andrew Ullmann, considers government measures to be dispensable. “We are in the final phase of the pandemic and have effective vaccines, antiviral drugs and a basic immunization rate of over 95 percent,” Ullmann told RND. “The burden of disease in the population is not as high as feared. The logical consequence is that we no longer need any state-mandatory measures.” Depending on the regulation, these could be repealed or simply phased out.
