Measures for the fall
RKI boss calls for new infection protection law
May 28, 2022, 5:47 p.m
The corona situation in Germany is currently quite relaxed. But that could change again in the fall. In order to curb a possible new wave, a new legal framework is needed, urges RKI boss Wieler. The current Infection Protection Act only applies until September 23rd.
In view of a possible new corona wave in autumn, the head of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, spoke out in favor of precautionary measures. He called for an effective legal framework to combat the virus. “The legal framework must of course be right,” he said on Bavarian radio with a view to the Infection Protection Act. The current version of the law runs until 23 September. The red-green-yellow federal government is currently struggling to find out what the corona protection requirements for the fall should look like.
Wieler said that probably all scientists “who are really serious and well-founded, i.e. with specialist knowledge, dealing with this pandemic assume that the numbers will rise again in autumn.” You will see increasing incidences again. “But what we don’t know – and that’s the big unknown – is which disease the virus will cause.”
The Green health politician Janosch Dahmen spoke out in favor of a mask requirement as an option with a view to autumn. “The effectiveness of medical masks in protecting against infection has already been sufficiently scientifically proven. We should not give up this instrument for the current and future pandemics and should therefore continue to make it possible for masks to be compulsory in the Infection Protection Act if necessary,” he told the “Rheinische Post”.
You don’t have to be a prophet to believe that further waves of severe respiratory diseases are possible in the coming autumn or winter, said Dahmen. He is confident that the Committee of Experts in its evaluation report on the Infection Protection Act and the Federal Government’s Pandemic Expert Council will come to a similar conclusion in this regard and, if necessary, in relation to further measures.
Lockdown as a last resort
The health policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Andrew Ullmann, said that the pandemic is now entering a new phase and that one should not react blindly with old tools. “Without a sufficiently scientifically proven efficiency data situation, further government cuts make little sense, especially not in reserve. Instead, the focus of the traffic light coalition must be on improved epidemiological COVID-19 data”.
The chairman of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that the Infection Protection Act needed to be amended “so that containment measures can be introduced when the situation becomes serious, and uniformly across the country”. As an ultima ratio, i.e. the last resort, “the possibility of a lockdown must also be anchored in it”.
The President of the BDI industry association, Siegfried Russwurm, on the other hand, called for things to return to normal. “People are now meeting physically again, so we can regain a bit of normality. We urgently need that,” Russwurm told the editorial network Germany at the Hanover Fair. “We are in a new normality. Due to the vaccinations, the probability of a severe course is now very low for most people. But certain risks of illness are part of our lives. That was the case even before Corona”.