Friday 15th January 2021
No need to do without masks
Bahn does not grant passengers a vaccination bonus
Those who are vaccinated against Corona will still have to observe all protective measures on the trains. That assured the CEO. At the same time, Lutz made it clear how badly the pandemic hit the company. In long-distance traffic, the number of passengers halved.
Bahn boss Richard Lutz has rejected possible special rights for corona vaccinated people. There won't be any from Deutsche Bahn, he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The company adhere to "the political guidelines. Nobody will be able to do without a mask for the time being just because they hold up a vaccination card."
According to the CEO, the number of passengers on long-distance trains during the corona pandemic fell more sharply than it has been in decades. "In 2019 we had more than 150 million long-distance passengers as never before," he said. At the end of 2020, at around 80 million, there were only half as many. Even at the beginning of 2021, the ICE and Intercity trains are only around 20 percent occupied, Lutz said.
For the time being, according to Deutsche Bahn, the situation will remain critical, but will improve at the end of the year. "The next few months will be tough. From April, May the situation will improve with the increasing number of vaccinations and higher temperatures," Lutz said. "I am confident that we as DB will be back to normal by the end of the year."
The financial consequences of the pandemic for the railway are therefore enormous. "We have forecast damage of almost ten billion euros for the railway business for the period up to 2024," said Lutz. "It will hit us hardest in 2020 and 2021. From 2022 we want to return to profitability."
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