Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has been infected with the corona virus. The 59-year-old tested positive on Thursday evening, his ministry said early Friday morning. He is doing well, he only has mild symptoms and is temporarily taking his official business out of domestic isolation. According to his ministry, Lauterbach has been vaccinated four times.
“This shows that with the highly contagious omicron variant, infection cannot be completely ruled out, even with extreme caution,” the ministry wrote. The minister therefore once again appeals to everyone to behave prudently and to ensure adequate vaccination protection so that infections and severe courses can be prevented as far as possible.
Lauterbach (SPD) repeatedly warns of the corona virus and potentially highly contagious variants that can still occur.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the seven-day incidence on Friday morning as 432.2. The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 451.3, in the previous week it was 607.0. However, experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI.
The health authorities in Germany recently reported 59,506 new corona infections to the RKI after 84,798 in the previous week and 165 deaths (previous week: 153) within one day. Here, too, comparisons of the data are only possible to a limited extent due to the test behavior, late registrations or transmission problems.
On Wednesday, Lauterbach and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) presented a new concept to arm Germany against a possible autumn corona wave. The focus is on wearing FFP2 or medical masks.
