Explosive discussions by the RKI
Internal Corona protocols published
March 24, 2024, 10:43 p.m
Due to a legal setback in court, the Robert Koch Institute has to release meeting minutes of its Corona crisis team. The documents provide an insight behind the scenes of the authority – and raise questions.
After a long legal dispute with the right-wing online magazine “Multipolar”, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has published internal meeting minutes of its Corona crisis team. The portal has now published the documents. According to a report by “ZDF todayThe more than 1,000 pages could have “politically explosive power”.
The minutes, agendas and lists of participants show, for example, how the decision was made on March 17, 2020 to set the risk assessment regarding the coronavirus from “moderate” to “high”. A day earlier, the documents noted that the new risk assessment had been prepared and should now be “scaled up”. “The risk assessment will be published as soon as (person’s name redacted) gives a signal.”
“No evidence for the use of FFP2 masks outside of occupational safety”
The magazine “Multipolar” draws the conclusion from the redaction that the announcement to change the risk level was made on the orders of an external actor. According to “ZDF today,” the text passage suggests that the “RKI carried out the risk assessment itself and, based on this, classified the risk as ‘high’.” Only the publication of the risk assessment depended on the release of the unnamed person.
In a meeting on October 30, 2020, the RKI dealt with FFP2 masks. The crisis team made it clear: “… there is no evidence for the use of FFP2 masks outside of occupational safety, this could also be made available to the public.” The public did not learn about this position. In winter 2020, a stricter mask requirement already applied, and the FFP2 mask also became mandatory in various federal states.
Doubts about AstraZeneca vaccine
At the beginning of 2021, the RKI spoke internally about vaccines. The crisis team apparently viewed the AstraZeneca vaccine very critically. On January 8th it was said that “the deployment must be discussed”. “It’s not a sure-fire success like the others because the vaccine is less perfect.” The group notes that there may have to be restrictions at Astrazeneca and that data for older people is very limited. Just two months later, at the beginning of March, the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) recommended the vaccine for all age groups and referred to new findings from studies.
The internal meetings, which are now publicly viewable, were mostly chaired by the then President of the RKI, Lothar Wieler, and his deputy, Lars Schaade. Schaade is currently head of the RKI. The authority has not yet commented on the publication.
The accessible logs end in April 2021, as the lawsuit from “Multipolar” related to the period from January 2020 to April 2021. Numerous passages are blacked out. As an explanation for this, the RKI provided a 1,000-page document. The magazine therefore wants to go back to the Berlin administrative court at the beginning of May in order to obtain a complete insight into the papers without redactions. “Multipolar” is published by, among others, the author Paul Schreyer, who has published several books with conspiracy stories.