The state government has canceled further central corona protection measures. She appeals to personal responsibility. The controls of the mask requirement in buses and trains have cost millions.
Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - From Wednesday there will be no longer a mask requirement in public transport in North Rhine-Westphalia and no longer a five-day isolation requirement for corona infected people. With reference to a further relaxed infection situation and a high degree of immunization, the NRW Ministry of Health announced the discontinuation of these protective measures on February 1, 2023 days ago. According to the federal government, the mask requirement in long-distance public transport will no longer apply on February 2nd. From Thursday in NRW there will no longer be a mask requirement on all buses and trains. Around three years after the start of the corona pandemic, NRW is largely returning to normal.
According to the NRW Ministry of Health, the principle of personal responsibility and consideration for others will apply from February 1st. "Anyone who is sick stays at home," Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) had said several times. The country's test and quarantine regulation expires on January 31, according to the ministry. With it, the obligation to go into domestic isolation for five days in the event of a corona infection ends. The scope of the Corona Protection Ordinance has been reduced. The ministry had emphasized that anyone who wanted to protect themselves in particular could of course voluntarily wear a mask on buses and trains.
However, protective measures, most of which are based on federal law, remain in place for particularly vulnerable groups in hospitals, nursing homes and medical practices. In hospitals, nursing homes and medical practices, employees and visitors must continue to wear a mask. A negative self-test for visitors is generally sufficient for entry, unless the facility offers a test option on site on its premises. Those who have tested positive for Corona are not allowed to enter these facilities - including workshops for people with disabilities - for five full days after the test. For employees there, an activity ban continues to apply until a negative test result is available.
The mask requirement in local public transport was introduced in NRW at the end of April 2020. Many municipalities had put the then CDU/FDP state government under pressure immediately beforehand with their own decrees or announcements. Covering your mouth and nose should reduce the risk of catching the coronavirus yourself or others. In addition to surgical masks, self-sewn fabric masks or scarves and cloths pulled over the face were initially permitted as protection. At the end of January 2021, the mask requirement in local public transport was tightened: medical masks such as surgical or FFP2 masks were prescribed.
Since the introduction of the mask requirement by the end of January this year, 462,110 deliberate mask violations have been documented in regional trains and at train stations in NRW alone, according to the NRW Safety Competence Center at the Rhein-Ruhr Transport Association (VRR). NRW-wide figures on fine procedures and criminal charges after violent clashes are just as little available as total figures from local transport companies on violations in buses and trains. In the dispute over the mask, it was repeatedly necessary to exclude stubborn refusers and repeat offenders from continuing to drive and to initiate fine proceedings together with the regulatory authorities and the federal police, it said.
In 2021 alone, around 1.5 million people were advised of the correct wearing of the mask and the necessary distance. According to the VRR, around 100 additional security guards on trains and around 120 security guards in train stations have been deployed in recent years to monitor the obligation to wear masks and the 3G rules, who are supposed to strengthen the regulatory authorities and the federal police. To finance the additional controls, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia provided the transport companies with an additional 15 million euros in the first year of the corona pandemic - 2020 - according to the competence center. In 2021, the transport companies would have even spent 22.6 million euros on additional security personnel.
