Minister wants to provide better information: Lauterbach defends shortened convalescent status

Minister wants better information
Lauterbach defends shortened convalescent status

Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach maintains that the shortening of the recovered status is correct. He also defends the decision against transitional regulations. Nevertheless, such changes should be better communicated in the future, says the SPD politician.

Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach has defended that there are no transitional regulations when the convalescent status is reduced from six to three months. “I can’t say now that there will be a transition if it cannot be maintained medically,” said the SPD politician on the ZDF program “Berlin direct”. In view of the now predominant omicron variant, people who have recovered from corona would unfortunately have lost their vaccination protection after three months and could become infected. “If you want security and want to control the number of cases and protect the vulnerable in particular, then you have to act quickly.”

Most recently, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) had set the shortening of the convalescent status to three months. One of the reasons for criticism, especially in the Union, was that the change had only been announced on the RKI website. “We have to try to win people over with arguments and not by taking them by surprise,” Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff told the daily newspaper “Welt”.

Lauterbach promised better communication on ZDF. “Better communication has been agreed,” said the Federal Minister of Health. He also emphasized that “with this rapidly developing omicron wave” action must be taken quickly. A draft resolution for the consultations of the federal and state governments on Monday also shows that changes in the application of Vaccination and recovery status should be announced in good time in the future. The paper is available from ntv.de.

The SPD politician campaigned for a continued cautious course. “We’re sticking with it,” he said, pointing out that unlike other loosening countries, Germany has the second-oldest population in Europe. He expects the peak of the wave with several hundred thousand newly infected people per day in mid-February. But: “Once we’ve got that behind us, then of course we can’t stay with the restrictions. And then you would open up again step by step. It’s right to consider that now.”

He believes that there will be other variants because there are still too many people around the world who could become infected. This is how virus combinations could arise. He fears: “In the fall we will have problems again,” said Lauterbach.

Lauterbach said in his capacity as a member of parliament – expressly not as a minister – that he considered the proposal by a cross-party group of members of the Bundestag around the Social Democrat Dirk Wiese for a temporary obligation to have three vaccinations to be conceivable. “You can’t expect more from the citizens.” The aim of compulsory vaccination is to create basic immunization in the population – “and of course this is given with three vaccinations”.

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