Prudent reopening trials in Germany, all the details
The government in Germany has fired a plan that restores liberty rights to vaccinated, cured and those with daily negative tests. Pierluigi Mennitti's article from Berlin
Prudent reopening trials. In Germany still entangled in the network of incidents and closures, the theme of the relaxation of security measures reappears and the government has fired a plan that looks with optimism to the future and restores the rights of freedom to vaccinated, cured and to those in possession of tests daily negatives. It will immediately go into discussion in the Bundestag and in the Bundesrat with fast track and can come into effect as early as this weekend.
For now, restaurants and bars have been closed since October, retailers sell their goods only to those who can exhibit a negative test of the day, a curfew is in effect from 10pm to 5am throughout the federal territory and personal contacts are limited at most. All still in force in the districts where the incidence is over 100 new cases per week per 100,000 inhabitants: a threshold – it should be remembered – well below that in which other countries reopen (including Italy).
It is Merkel's prudence, which after many tribulations has managed to impose itself on the majority of the riotous regional presidents, inaugurating a sort of preferential path for the central state towards the Länder: a small revolution in a country jealous of its federal tradition. In fact, however, the infections have started to decrease, closely after the introduction of new restrictive measures, stopping the feared third wave. The latest figure of the day provided by the Robert Koch Institut is 7,534 new cases, 3,400 fewer than a week ago, equal to an average 7-day incidence of 141.4. It has been decreasing for days, although regional and municipal differences are still significant. 315 still dead.
At the same time, the vaccination campaign took off. The uncertainties and impasses of the first months are now the past, the present is made up of record numbers of daily administrations, which now constantly exceed one million, and the millions of new doses announced for the weeks of May and June. Thus the bookings for the third priority group started, which together with the over sixty-year-olds includes some categories on display (supermarket employees, support school staff, journalists), and Health Minister Jens Spahn counts between the end of May and the beginning of finally open to everyone. To date, 8.1% of Germans are fully vaccinated (almost 7 million), 28.7 have received the first dose (just under 24 million). From September, when the EMA will also have given the green light , the vaccination with Biontech-Pfizer will also affect children aged 12 and over.
For experts, the combined action of targeted restrictions and vaccination progression halted the contagion curve, even before it took its dreaded exponential form, and now Germany is taking steps to hook the wave of reopening that is affecting other European countries, including neighboring ones such as Austria, Holland and Switzerland.
Even for a cautious type like the epidemiologist-deputy of the SPD Karl Lauterbach, the Cassandra who has always centered the forecasts on infections, summer is tinged with pink and promises a return to a life closer to normal: loosening the restrictions for vaccinated and cured are correct and without alternative, he said, the important thing is not to forget the precautions that have become daily (for example, masks) so as not to frustrate the efforts made so far in the last mile.
So, starting from the thorny issue of vaccinated and cured people, which opens up the issue of how many restrictions are constitutionally possible against a segment of the population (with the passing of the weeks ever wider) exposed to a residual risk of infection. An argument that clashes with the risk of creating a two-class society, and of deepening the rifts and divisions between "the privileged" who have already been able to support two administrations and those who are still forced to wait their turn. There is talk of social envy, and this time psychologists have taken the field.
The government has decided, finding a trick that virologists and doctors don't like but convinces everyone else: the re-appropriation of almost complete freedoms will involve full vaccinates (both doses made with one of the vaccines approved by the EMA), the recovered and those who exhibit a negative test. The effectiveness of the tests compared to the certification of a vaccination is less, this complained the president of the order of doctors, but the equation of the former with the latter eliminates an element of social friction.
The government project has the stamp of the Social Democratic Minister for Justice Christine Lambrecht and immediately contemplates the exclusion of the three categories mentioned from the observance of the curfew, the limit to private contacts, the obligation of negative tests in order to enter a shop or go at the hairdresser. The obligation to quarantine when returning from abroad is also removed, unless it is one of the countries cataloged as centers of virus mutation (such as India, Brazil or South Africa). While waiting for the digital passport, which Spahn promises for June, the paper one will be sufficient.
Once again, the government regulation unifies a series of similar initiatives that have already started in individual Länder (for example North Rhine-Westphalia), while others are going further by regulating the reopening of the tourism sector. Bavaria, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony have already given the green light for districts with incidences of less than 50 new cases, some areas especially in northern Germany are not far from this threshold. That of restaurants (in the outdoor version) and hotels will be the next frontier of reopening, perhaps also extended to those who have received only the first dose of the vaccine, as decided by the government of neighboring Austria. The debate has already started.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/prove-prudenti-di-riapertura-in-germania-tutti-i-dettagli/ on Tue, 04 May 2021 13:25:05 +0000.