AThe effects of the Corona crisis on children and an impending further shortage of skilled workers in the healthcare sector are central topics of the German Doctors’ Day, which begins this Tuesday in Bremen. Doctors President Klaus Reinhardt was critical of the traffic light coalition’s corona policy before the Doctors’ Day. “Within the coalition there are very different ideas about how to deal with Corona, which leads to a lurching course and confusion,” he told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. He said to Lauterbach that his communication behavior was “sometimes quite strange”. Reinhardt referred to the minister’s backtracking on an initially announced switch to voluntary isolation for people infected with the corona virus.
Reinhardt is cautious about the government plans to procure additional corona vaccines for the fall. He also argues with the lack of clarity regarding possible new virus variants. “It only makes sense if these vaccines have already been adapted to the new virus variant, i.e. are more effective than the previous ones.” In addition, it must first be clear that further vaccinations bring a real advantage. “So far there have been contradictory study results from Great Britain and Israel for the four vaccinations.” According to Lauterbach, a strategy of the federal government provides 830 million euros to procure a preparation announced by the manufacturer Moderna, which works in different variants at the same time.
Incidence continues to decline
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence of the corona virus as 307.2 this Tuesday morning. The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 312.1, a week ago 437.6, a month ago 807.0. However, the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation.
Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI – due to overworked health authorities and because not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only these count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.
The health authorities in Germany recently reported 64,437 new corona infections (previous week: 86,252) and 159 deaths (previous week: 215) to the RKI within one day. Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent due to the test behavior, late registrations or transmission problems.
The RKI has counted 26,109,965 infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic. The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher.
Teachers’ Association: Poorly prepared for the fall
The German Teachers’ Association accuses politicians of insufficiently preparing schools for the coming school year in view of the corona pandemic. “Politicians are not doing their homework on the topic of pandemics and schools,” said association president Heinz-Peter Meidinger to the editorial network Germany. The course must already be set for safe teaching in the coming school year. “In an autumn wave, masks can be a decisive factor in keeping schools open.” At the moment, however, the federal states lack the legal basis to order masks to be compulsory in schools across the board. “The federal government must therefore quickly adapt the Infection Protection Act again.”
At the same time, the schools “must be equipped and prepared now at the latest in such a way that distance learning will definitely work.” In addition to the supply of fast Internet, there is still a lack of professional IT support and the promised further training for teachers.