Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Incidence of School Closures
GroKo justifies 165 limit value
From what number of cases is it no longer justifiable to open schools? In a draft law for the nationwide emergency brake, the Union and the SPD have committed themselves to a seven-day incidence of 165. This value apparently has an arbitrary origin.
Union and SPD have defended the higher incidence value of 165 for school closings in the federal emergency brake. By giving priority to vaccinations, the “school staff will be vaccinated in their entirety in a timely manner”, according to a “question and answer catalog”, including the CDU / CSU health and legal politicians to the members of the Union parliamentary group. “On the other hand, it is assumed that the infection rate in schools below this threshold can be controlled through regular testing,” it continues.
Choosing the higher threshold value also takes into account the enormous burdens that working parents would have to face if they had to look after their children for a long time or had to organize childcare. “In addition, it takes into account the fact that children and young people are less able to do without human contact than adults and that they also learn to socialize in school.”
For the SPD parliamentary group, health expert Sabine Dittmar said she was “incredibly happy that we got away from the 200”. Group vice-president Dirk Wiese said that the threshold had been debated for a long time. “Ultimately, the 165 results from the fact that on Monday the average value of all 16 federal states for the incidence value was around 165.”
The German Teachers’ Association was critical. The fact that the original incidence limit for school closings was lowered from 200 to 165 is progress, said association president Heinz-Peter Meidinger to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “But even an incidence of 165 is still far too high.” One should not forget that the nationwide incidence in the age group between 10 and 19 years is already significantly higher than in the general population, warned Meidinger. “In order to effectively stop the spread of the virus in schools, face-to-face classes must be stopped at an incidence of 100.”
Meidinger said that he had no understanding of why schools were set to a different, coarser standard than in other areas of society. In contrast to schools, the federal emergency brake provides a threshold of 100 for most other measures. For school closings, a limit of 200 should initially apply. After much criticism, this was lowered to 165. The law is to be passed in the Bundestag on Wednesday.
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