After almost three years of the pandemic, there is growing hope in the federal states that the last corona protection measures will fall in 2023 and that there will be a new normal in dealing with the virus. “If the pandemic becomes an epidemic, then it makes sense to give the responsibility for infection protection back to the people,” said Bremen Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte (SPD) of the German Press Agency.
“People now have a high level of routine in dealing with the corona virus,” says NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU). “That’s why they don’t need any behavioral recommendations from politicians, especially for the private sector.”
In some places, the obligation to isolate infected people is already a thing of the past, mask rules on buses and trains are crumbling, and free quick tests are being reduced. In the traffic light coalition, the FDP in particular is drumming for a quick end to further everyday requirements – but not all prime ministers go along with it, as a dpa survey showed.
“The crowds are often so big on buses and trains that I would wear a mask myself, even if it wasn’t compulsory.
Boris Rhein, Hesse’s Prime Minister (CDU)
Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU), for example, wants to stick to the mask requirement in local public transport for the time being – and considers it a relatively minor interference with personal rights anyway. As a citizen of Frankfurt, he can say from his own experience: “The crowds are often so big on buses and trains that I would wear a mask myself – even if there were no obligation.”
Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) sees it similarly and considers the requirement to be sensible, at least in the winter months. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s state government does not want to overturn the rule before spring either.
Thuringia has already extended its corona rules until February 3rd – including the obligation to isolate and wear a mask in local transport. According to the Ministry of Health, there could be easing in March. Bremen’s Mayor Bovenschulte believes that an end to the obligation to isolate makes sense in the medium term and wants to coordinate with the state government in Hanover, “because tens of thousands of people from Lower Saxony work in Bremen and vice versa”.
Hamburg’s Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) also advocates a procedure that is as uniform as possible and criticized the fact that some countries went it alone in abolishing the obligation to isolate and wear masks.
Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate have already said goodbye to the obligation to isolate if the test is positive and are instead relying on a stricter mask requirement for infected people. The mask requirement in local transport has already been abolished in Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, and in Schleswig-Holstein it will expire at the end of the year.
For long-distance trains and long-distance buses, an FFP2 mask requirement is stipulated nationwide until April 7, 2023. The mask requirement also applies in medical practices, clinics and nursing homes.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) put the nationwide seven-day incidence on Saturday morning at 260.6. This is evident from numbers that reflect the status of the RKI dashboard at 5 a.m. The day before, the value of new corona infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 258.5 (previous week: 251.7; previous month: 186.9). However, this information only provides a very incomplete picture of the number of infections.
Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI – mainly because by far not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.
The health authorities in Germany recently reported 34,092 new corona infections (previous week: 34,308) and 157 deaths (previous week: 147) to the RKI within one day. Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent due to the test behavior, late registrations or transmission problems.
In general, the number of registered new infections and deaths varies significantly from weekday to weekday, since many federal states do not transmit them to the RKI, especially at weekends, and report their cases later in the week.
The RKI has counted 37,121,937 proven infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic. The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections go undetected. (dpa)
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