Munich (dpa / lby) - Bavaria rejects the co-financing of the citizens' share of three euros for corona tests. "The federal government has decided to introduce this fee and must also stand by it. Passing these costs on to the federal states does not do justice to the overall social challenge posed by the pandemic," said Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) on Thursday in Munich. He announced that he wanted to address the new corona test strategy that has been in force since Thursday at the special meeting of the health ministers (GMK) on Friday.
"We states are already shouldering a considerable part of the financial burden caused by the pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Free State of Bavaria has spent more than 200 million euros on quarantine and isolation," said Holetschek. In Bavaria alone, around 700 million euros were spent on tests in schools and daycare centers. "We also cover the costs of testing employees. In this regard, the mood among the countries is unanimous across parties - for good reason."
Holetschek again spoke out in favor of implementing the new test strategy as closely as possible to the citizen with as little bureaucracy as possible. Holetschek recommended everyone who would now have to pay three euros for a test to use the significantly cheaper self-tests. "It's mainly about people who want to attend an event indoors, who have contact with people at high risk and people whose warning app doesn't work. Since there is no obligation to test for these groups, self-tests are a good alternative. They are available from less than one euro per test."
At the same time, Holetschek criticized the short-term implementation of the new rules: “Unfortunately, what I have been warning about for weeks has happened: the new federal test regulation reached us only a few hours before it came into force. We states had and therefore have hardly any buffer to implement the new regulations appropriately and to communicate in a way that the citizens can understand." A few test sites did not know on Thursday that they now had to pay fees from the citizens.
