Thursday, December 9th, 2021
Another federal-state round
Countries are struggling, but experts are calling for action
A week after a federal-state summit, the heads of government are sitting together again. But the signals are waiting, there shouldn’t be any big decisions. Not only are experts pushing for this, the municipalities are also calling for long-term concepts.
At the Prime Minister’s Conference (MPK) of the federal states, no new far-reaching resolutions are emerging. However, several country leaders brought new measures against the corona pandemic into play – and experts are calling for a quick reaction in view of the high number of cases. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, who chairs the MPK, spoke out in advance for a drug strategy. “There are more and more drugs that are being approved, that are becoming available. I would also like to discuss this today,” said the CDU politician on ARD. “We need a drug strategy coordinated by the federal and state governments.”
At the same time, Wüst advised against major Christmas trips at home and abroad. “Not everything that is allowed is also smart,” he said, and added: “I would be more cautious”. Lower Saxony’s head of government Stephan Weil has meanwhile announced that he will speak in the country round about contact restrictions for people who have been vaccinated after Christmas. It depends on what Mr Weil imagines such a Christmas rest to be, said Wüst. “I am open to the conversation.”
The heads of government of the federal states want to talk about a wide range of topics at the virtual MPK. Corona is also likely to play a role, but the federal and state governments only agreed on new corona measures last week. At the same time, it is the first country round after the change of government in the federal government. The new Chancellor Olaf Scholz is to join the country representatives at 4:30 p.m.
Bremen rejects a general lockdown
“We have made an agreement that we now want to see whether the new changes to the Infection Protection Act are sufficient,” said Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow of the “Rheinische Post” and the “General-Anzeiger”. He was skeptical about possible further contact restrictions. Even with vaccinated people, the vaccination status says “nothing” about “whether someone can pass the virus on after all”. He is in favor of testing and “consistent application of the 2G plus rule”. At the same time, Ramelow’s federal state wants to tighten the corona rules for regions particularly hard hit by the pandemic.
Bremen’s Prime Minister Andreas Bovenschulte called a renewed general lockdown the wrong way. Anyone who wants to close shops, cinemas and restaurants across the board to everyone must honestly confess that they want a lockdown for people who have been vaccinated twice or three times, even if they have also been tested. “Then there would be no more incentive to get vaccinated,” said Bovenschulte in a government statement. In Bremen, the corona situation is less dramatic compared to other countries. In addition, the state has the highest vaccination rate.
There were also rather wait-and-see signals from federal politics. Before further corona rules are also drawn up for unvaccinated people, existing guidelines should be better checked, said the green health expert Janosch Dahmen in the ARD. “At the moment, the main problem we have is that we have to implement the measures that are fundamentally applicable and possible,” he emphasized. “The best rules are of no use if they are not applied in practice.”
DIVI leader calls for preparations for Omikron
But the pressure on the country chiefs is also increasing. The intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis called on politicians to prepare quickly for a possible widespread spread of the omicron variant. “We don’t yet know how dangerous Omicron is. So we have to be prepared for everything,” Karagiannidis told the “Spiegel”. He heads the register of intensive care capacities in Germany run by the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).
If the first studies confirm that the vaccines do not work as well against Omikron as against previous variants, politicians must be able to act quickly, demanded Karagiannidis. The intensive care units are already at their limit, warned Karagiannidis. “We urgently need to reduce the incidences a good bit so that we have room for Omikron.” He mentioned a value of less than 200. “Sometimes I can no longer hear myself,” Karagiannidis continued. Politicians have totally underestimated the delta wave and got lost in the federal election campaign at the most critical moment. “I would recommend that the next general election be postponed should it fall again into a critical phase of a pandemic.”
Meanwhile, the municipalities are calling for a longer-term strategy from the federal and state governments to deal with the pandemic in the coming year. The chief executive of the German Association of Cities and Towns, Gerd Landsberg, told the newspapers of the Funke media group that he expected “the prime ministers to agree on a sustainable concept as to how we want to continue fighting the pandemic in 2022”. This included the preparation for a possibly necessary fourth booster vaccination, the organization of the vaccinations for children and the provision and distribution of the vaccine as well as “a concept as to how school and day-care center closings can be largely prevented in the long term”.
With a view to the aggressive Corona protests, Landsberg demanded a clear signal from the federal and state governments that demonstrations in violation of the Corona ordinances or demonstrations in front of private houses by politicians “will not be tolerated and will be consistently pursued by police means”.