The omicron variant of the corona virus is spreading in Germany. The Federal Council is to adopt new quarantine rules. At the same time, laboratories and health authorities are reaching their limits in many places.
Berlin – The Federal Council will hold a special session on Friday to discuss further measures in the corona pandemic. It’s about new quarantine rules that the federal and state governments have agreed on.
The ordinance that the Bundestag passed on Thursday evening stipulates, for example, that people with booster vaccinations are exempt from quarantine as contact persons for infected people. In general, quarantine and isolation times should be shortened.
After the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, i.e. the chamber of the federal states, should finally deal with the new rules on Friday. Ultimately, they are then implemented by the federal states. With the help of the shorter quarantine and isolation times, important supply areas should be kept running, even if the number of infected people increases sharply. The federal and state governments had agreed on the new regulations last week.
Omicron on the rise
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach also wants to give an up-to-date assessment of the increasing spread of the new Omikron variant. In addition to the SPD politician, the President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, and the Berlin virologist Christian Drosten want to speak at the federal press conference. According to the current RKI weekly report, Omikron has spread rapidly in Germany. According to the most recent data for the first calendar week of 2022, which is based on reports from the federal states and also includes suspected cases, according to the RKI report, the variant accounted for 73 percent and thus predominates.
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the Federal Association of Physicians in the Public Health Service, Ute Teichert, once again complained about a shortage of staff in the health authorities. “Many health authorities have therefore restricted contact tracing. You can only take care of larger outbreaks, for example in nursing homes,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “If the number of infections continues to rise, it will be difficult for the health authorities to enter the data on a daily basis.” If the staff is not significantly increased at short notice, there will be no clear overview of the pandemic in the next few weeks.
Prioritization in PCR tests
Because of the bottlenecks in the German laboratories when evaluating PCR tests, politicians called for rules on who should be able to carry out such a test as a matter of priority. The health expert of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Tino Sorge (CDU), told the “Welt”: “As long as there is a risk of overload, the existing capacities must be used primarily according to urgency and medical needs.” The Ministry of Health must issue a recommendation for action to prioritize PCR as soon as possible – Submit tests. The chairman of the Association of German Laboratory Doctors, Andreas Bobrowski, said: “The test laboratories in northern Germany are already at the limit and it is a matter of time before everyone in the country has reached this mark.”
According to virologist Klaus Stöhr, tracking the contacts of infected people is no longer appropriate. “In terms of incidence, the health authorities can no longer cope,” he said in the podcast “Die Wochentester” of the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and the editorial network Germany. He added: “If a large part of the population is mildly and asymptomatically infected and has antibodies, a so-called contact tracking quarantine becomes pointless.” According to Stöhr, the best way out of the pandemic would be if the vaccinated became infected. “The package will then provide long-lasting immune protection.” dpa
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