Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) have agreed on a catalog of corona protection measures for the upcoming autumn and winter.
The proposed measures provide for a phased model from October to April next year, regardless of whether an epidemic situation of national importance is identified. This model enshrines nationally uniform and mandatory basic protection measures in law. These are supplemented by possible further measures.
The ministers’ draft will now go into the further voting process with the federal states, government factions in the German Bundestag and the federal departments, in order to then be able to be passed as a law.
Lauterbach and Buschmann want to comment on the planned measures on Wednesday afternoon. These are to be discussed at a conference of health ministers on August 9th.
“I think the package is very good. We are prepared for autumn,” Lauterbach told the newspapers of the Funke media group on Wednesday morning, without giving any details. “At the same time, it protects us from being overburdened by too many Covid patients and from a critical situation caused by staff shortages.”
Lauterbach nevertheless warned of a “very difficult” autumn. Even those who were vaccinated four times with the previous vaccines would only have an infection protection of less than 40 percent compared to the omicron variant BA.5. The SPD politician told the newspapers that he feared that the critical infrastructure and hospitals could be overloaded.
However, vaccines adapted to the omicron variant could help in the threatening autumn wave. Lauterbach assumes that these will be available at the beginning of autumn. “In September we will have adapted vaccines,” he said last Friday.
