Monday, November 8th, 2021
Traffic light advises corona laws
3G on the job and free trials planned
The seven-day incidence cracks the 200 mark, the traffic light parties are discussing stricter corona measures. Accordingly, 3G should also soon apply in the workplace and Covid tests should be free again.
The SPD, Greens and FDP want to introduce a 3G regulation in the job in view of the sharply increasing number of corona infections. According to this, only employees would come to their workplace who can prove that they have been vaccinated, recovered or recently tested. “There is a consensus among the SPD, Greens and FDP that we want to push this forward,” said the parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Marco Buschmann. In view of the situation, this is “an appropriate course of action”.
Buschmann also confirmed that the three parties currently working to form a traffic light coalition want to return to free corona tests for all citizens. The FDP has always considered the expiry of the free citizen tests in October to be a mistake.
Green parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt had already spoken out in favor of free tests. Because of the dynamic situation, additional steps beyond the measures planned so far are required. “We will have to go back to the home office more,” she said and at the same time pleaded for the 3G rule at work. As a further point, Göring-Eckardt named a “reserve premium” with which a sufficient number of intensive care beds in the hospitals should be guaranteed.
FDP politician Buschmann vigorously rejected the impression that the countries no longer had the necessary legal basis for measures to contain the pandemic. This is still given by the Infection Protection Act. And the legislative package of the SPD, Greens and FDP with the new regulation will be in force in good time before the so-called pandemic emergency of national scope expires in November. “There will be no legal ambiguity.”
Parliament could decide next week
The draft law, with which the traffic light parties want to enable corona measures even after the epidemic emergency has expired at the end of November, is to be discussed in the first reading in the Bundestag on Thursday. Hearings are planned afterwards. Parliament and probably also the Federal Council could then pass the law in the coming week.
Göring-Eckardt, like SPD leader Saskia Esken, defended the plan of the traffic light parties to let the epidemic situation of national scope expire and to pass the new laws. This puts health protection “on a new, strong legal basis,” said Esken.
Buschmann emphasized: “The instrument case is on the table. At the moment it is still the old one. And once the epidemic emergency runs out, it will be the reduced one.” However, it will only be reduced by measures that have either already been declared in court to be disproportionate and unconstitutional, “or which we consider to be inappropriate and disproportionate”. This included, for example, comprehensive company closings or the closing of schools and universities on a large scale.
The FDP politician does not see a need for a new corona meeting between the prime ministers and the incumbent federal government. The top priority now is to ensure safety in the old people’s and nursing homes, to improve the vaccination rate and to organize boosters. “The instruments required for this are known. And the federal states can also use these instruments.” Göring-Eckardt pleaded for “good, common solutions”, which is why dialogue should be sought with the countries. “The situation is not suitable to be on the way to party politics.”
Intensive care units are almost 90 percent full
In view of the increasing number of infections and a current seven-day incidence of more than 200, Germany’s hospitals are again preparing to significantly reduce their operations. If it does not succeed in breaking the new wave, “we will have more than 4,000 Covid patients in intensive care again very soon,” said the chairman of the board of the German Hospital Association, Gerald Gaß, of the newspapers of the Funke media group.
The head of the Divi register of intensive care capacities, Christian Karagiannidis, sees the intensive care units nationwide at almost 90 percent full capacity. In WDR he said that the situation was particularly tense in Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia.