There is no shortage of calls these days.

The governing mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller (SPD), has appealed in a letter to around 200,000 students in the capital to be fully vaccinated against corona.

Berlin had already started additional vaccinations for students in mid-June and continued to support the vaccination offers of the company medical services at the universities.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in politics.

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Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for “Bildungswelten”.

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Müller hopes that this will ensure a secure, face-to-face study in the coming winter semester and cites a correspondingly high vaccination rate as a requirement.

The Federal Association of Catholics in Business and Administration spoke on Thursday of a “moral and ethical vaccination requirement”.

"As Christians, we are obliged to protect not only ourselves, but also our fellow human beings," said the head of the association, Josef Ridders, explaining the appeal.

For him, a general vaccination requirement is only "sensible and enforceable" as a last resort.

More than half of the people in Germany are now completely vaccinated against Corona. But while the willingness to vaccinate is noticeably decreasing and is likely to lag far behind the expectations of experts, the number of infections is now increasing again every day. In addition to the compulsory vaccination, there is also discussion about motivating unvaccinated people to have an injection with gentle pressure. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) said that vaccinated and convalescent people could not be permanently subjected to all the restrictions "that must apply to non-vaccinated people in order to fight the pandemic".

He also sees no constitutional problems for different treatment.

Schäuble warned in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that everyone should deal more closely with the question of what consequences a refusal to vaccinate would have for their fellow human beings.

"That should definitely be a topic among friends and acquaintances," he said.

"A certain social pressure would not be wrong in my opinion." He could not understand the low willingness to vaccinate, said Schäuble.

"That makes me extremely sad."

Seehofer wants to stick to free tests

Politicians could provide a strong incentive for vaccination by making the current alternative - the corona test - chargeable in the future. Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (both SPD) and CSU leader Markus Söder had already spoken out in favor of this. The Baden-Württemberg Minister of Science Theresia Bauer (Greens) supported the project on Thursday for her area: She wants tests to cost something for students in the future. Everywhere in the country you can now get a vaccination appointment without any problems, said Bauer on Thursday in Stuttgart.

"I think anyone who does not want to accept these offers and decides against a vaccination without medical reasons should take care of the tests themselves." Furthermore, free rapid tests are the wrong signal from their point of view. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) objected. “As long as the pandemic lasts, I wouldn't change anything about the free of charge. I want those who have neither been vaccinated nor recovered to have the chance of the test, ”Seehofer told the Mittelbayerische Zeitung. "How many people do you think can no longer take or cannot take the test if it is not free?"

The chairwoman of the Marburger Bund doctors' union, Susanne Johna, warned of the overburdening of hospitals in late autumn. "The coming fourth wave represents a great challenge for doctors and nurses," said Johna of the FAZ. Unlike last year, operations that could be planned are no longer postponed. In view of the comparatively low vaccination rate, she expects that more Covid 19 patients will have to be treated in hospitals again in late autumn. Without a new lockdown, flu and other viruses would also spread much more strongly than last year.

"Under no circumstances should we be doing large-scale experiments like we have just done in England," said Johna, referring to the government's decision in London to lift almost all corona restrictions.

"We should continue to maintain the mask requirement indoors." It is true that the same high incidence, given the vaccination campaign, causes fewer serious cases of illness than before the vaccinations.

But there will still be a dependency of the numbers on each other, said Johna.

The assessment by Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) that an incidence of 200 corresponds to the old value of 50 is too optimistic.

Is an incidence of 150 the new 50?

"Because vaccinated people can occasionally become infected with corona, the ratio is likely to be less favorable," she said. The old incidence of 50 currently corresponds to a value of 150. The Robert Koch Institute gave the nationwide incidence, i.e. the number of confirmed infections within one week per 100,000 inhabitants, as 16 on Thursday morning. Within one day, 3142 infections were added.

As for the situation at universities, American universities are much more rigorous when it comes to vaccination. More and more universities are demanding a vaccination from students and staff - this includes MIT and the elite universities Yale, Harvard and Stanford. The European Court of Human Rights considers an area-specific compulsory vaccination, for example for schools, universities or the health care system, to be legal.