Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Lauterbach’s draft for countries
Compulsory testing for boosters should be dropped
Across Germany, 20.5 million people are already considered boosted. In some federal states, you are exempt from the test requirement for events with 2G-Plus rules. The exact health minister Lauterbach wants to enforce this regulation across Germany, but meets with resistance.
For corona-vaccinated persons with a booster vaccination, the test obligation for 2G-Plus rules is to be dropped in the future. This emerges from a draft by the Federal Ministry of Health for the conference with the state department heads in the afternoon, which is available to Reuters. However, it is suggested that in “medical and nursing facilities” to protect particularly vulnerable groups of people, a negative test result should also be required from people who have been vaccinated three times.
The new Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach had already announced this step. Sending vaccinated people with booster vaccinations for testing does not make sense from a medical point of view, said the SPD politician of the ARD. The Bavarian Minister of Health, Klaus Holetschek, also considers lifting the test requirement for boosters to be justifiable. This could also be “an additional vaccination incentive,” said Holetschek, who currently chairs the conference of health ministers, on ZDF.
Across Germany, 20.5 million people have already picked up a booster vaccination. In some federal states, people who have been vaccinated three times are already exempt from the obligation to test. It can apply, for example, to events with 2G-plus rules – those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered must then also have a negative corona test. In Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Thuringia, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Saarland, boosters no longer need a corresponding proof. In Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia, for example, this also applies to people whose second vaccination was less than six months ago, and to those who have recovered, whose Covid 19 disease was no longer than six months ago.
Opposing voices are loud
The abolition of compulsory tests for people who have been vaccinated three times is not without controversy. “It is premature to exempt people with booster vaccinations from the obligation to test,” said the chairwoman of the Federal Association of Doctors in the Public Health Service (BVÖGD), Ute Teichert, of the Funke media group. She pointed out that the new Coronavirus variant Omikron is on the advance and it is not yet known exactly how well the booster vaccinations worked against it.
“As long as we do not have enough data to be able to say this with certainty, we should not take any hasty steps” and “give up tried and tested instruments such as rapid tests,” said Teichert. The background is, among other things, warnings from Great Britain that the Omikron variant could spread very quickly.
The German Foundation for Patient Protection also warns against the move. Giving political gifts before Christmas would be punished in January, CEO Eugen Brysch told the Funke newspapers. “With the Omikron variant, a tidal wave is rolling towards Germany.”
Virologist Martin Stürmer also considers the move to be premature. Even if there is good protection against virus transmission immediately after the booster vaccination, even with the new Corona variant Omikron, the data situation is still too uncertain, said Stürmer on ZDF. “That is why I would advocate at this point in time not to relax the boosters and to use the test capacities to find out as much as possible.”
Post-entry PCR test
In addition, the Federal Ministry of Health proposes to the countries that Entry regulation to tighten. In the future, travelers from virus variant areas will have to do a PCR test in addition to a mandatory corona test before departure abroad, even after arriving in Germany.
“The affected entrants must go to quarantine immediately until the result is available,” says the draft. The background to this is experience with travelers from South Africa in the Netherlands, for example, in whom the Omikron variant was detected in several dozen cases after arrival.