Up to 500 dead a day
Lauterbach: Opening it now would cost many lives
2/9/2022 1:48 am
Denmark declared “Freedom Day” last week, and Israel has also said goodbye to many measures. While the calls for early easing are getting louder in Germany, Health Minister Lauterbach warns against being too impatient. Otherwise Germany would have to accept significantly more deaths.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach does not currently consider an opening course, such as that recently adopted by Israel, to be exemplary for Germany. If one proceeded in a similar way to Israel, “400, maybe 500 people” would die every day, said the SPD politician in the ZDF “Today Journal”. In a situation so late in the pandemic, he should not imagine that. “The approach in Israel is very risky because the protection of the elderly is not really enough to open up so much.” In Germany, an average of 140 people die every day in connection with an infection.
The minister reiterated that he was sure the wave would break by Easter. “I even believe that we will see the number of cases stabilize in the next two or three weeks and that it could then go down.” Lauterbach considers the previous course in the Omicron wave to be successful. In view of the many older unvaccinated people, the death rate in Germany is relatively low. However, he warns against withdrawing the measures too quickly, so you can get through this wave until the end of February. If a general vaccination requirement were then introduced, Germany would also be prepared for a relapse in the fall.
With regard to the facility-related vaccination requirement that will apply from mid-March, Lauterbach said that he continues to assume that Bavaria will also implement the vaccination requirement for nursing and hospital staff. There is no “mechanism” to force Prime Minister Markus Söder to do so. “I hope we can work here with normal reason,” said the Minister of Health. The law that has been passed cannot be reversed so easily, but it is possible not to implement it. Söder had announced a suspension of enforcement. “It is very unpopular to implement this law because the facilities are losing employees – at least for a short time,” admits Lauterbach. Nobody wants that. “But we don’t do it as a form of harassment, we want to protect people who are particularly at risk from infection and death,” said the Minister of Health. Lauterbach explained that if a state signals that the law is not being checked, the facilities do not even report who is not vaccinated.