The new chairman of the conference of health ministers, Manne Lucha (Greens), advocates the elimination of the corona mask requirement in long-distance public transport in February. The aim should be for there to be as uniform rules as possible throughout Germany from next month, said the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Health to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Thursday editions). “If the mask requirement in local transport is now removed, it should also be removed in long-distance transport at the same time,” he emphasized.
Lucha announced on Wednesday that the mask requirement in public transport in Baden-Württemberg would end on January 31. A number of federal states had already abolished the obligation to wear respiratory masks in local public transport or announced their end.
Nationwide, however, according to previous planning, the mask requirement should apply until April 7th. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) does not rule out an early end. However, he recently said that it was still too early for an end. Lauterbach justified this with the tense situation in the hospitals.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence on Thursday morning as 115.7. 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 122.8 (previous week: 174.6; previous month: 195.1).
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 not all infected people have a PCR test done. But only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations and transmission problems can lead to the distortion of individual daily values. (AFP/dpa)
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