Corona just seems to have lost its terror. However, Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach advises not to become too careless. "The Corona autumn will not be a bed of roses," he says in an interview.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach is concerned about the upcoming Corona autumn and winter. "Many people mistakenly believe that only the lighter variants will prevail in the course of a pandemic. That is a mistake," said the SPD minister of the "Welt am Sonntag".
There is no so-called selection advantage for lighter variants. "We have to be prepared for anything," said Lauterbach. There are already between 100 and 150 corona deaths per day in Germany, said the SPD politician. "My concern is that that number could go up."
The Minister of Health expects the situation to deteriorate in the coming months: "The Corona autumn will not be a picnic," he said. The BA.5 variant of the corona virus will bring an increase in the number of cases, at least initially - especially when it gets colder and people spend more time indoors. "There will then be failures in companies and critical infrastructure, such as in hospitals - so we are facing difficult times," warned the minister.
In addition, Lauterbach defended himself against criticism of the planned mask requirement for students from the fifth grade. "It is incompatible with my job as Minister of Health that children become ill in large numbers. It is irresponsible for an entire generation to be infected," he said. It's about millions of children. "We still don't know what this infection does to the children's immune systems if it occurs repeatedly. As a society, we cannot take the risk of mass infections in schools."
In preparation for autumn and winter, the federal traffic light coalition agreed on a new infection protection law a few days ago. This provides for nationwide rules such as wearing FFP2 masks in long-distance passenger transport. However, the federal states can set their own requirements, for example for a mask requirement in publicly accessible indoor areas or outdoors if a minimum distance of one and a half meters cannot be maintained there. The minister expects that many federal states will use the rules as early as the beginning of October, "if the number of cases increases significantly".
As the “Bild” newspaper reported, citing a query to the federal states, they disagree about indicators for the application of stricter corona measures. Different indicators would be taken as a basis for accepting the concept of a "concrete threat" to the functioning of the health system or other key areas. The state of Berlin therefore wants to rely on a mixture of different key figures, including the development of the number of cases, hospital occupancy and staff shortages in the critical infrastructure. Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony also want to be guided by the situation in the clinics. According to “Bild”, the majority of the federal states have not yet defined any indicators for further corona measures and continue to hope for uniform nationwide criteria.
