Health insurance chief Andreas Gassen has called for all corona restrictions to be lifted by October 30th.
"After the experiences from Great Britain we should also have the courage to do what has worked on the island," he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
“So now we need a clear statement from politicians: In six weeks we will also have Freedom Day!
All restrictions will be lifted on October 30th! "
The chairman of the board of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) emphasized that the date would give anyone who wanted enough time to be vaccinated. In his advance, Gassen referred to the experience in Great Britain, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson had largely ended the containment of the pandemic in mid-July. “The health system there has not collapsed. That has to be encouraging, especially since the German health system is much more efficient than the British and could treat significantly more seriously ill people, which we hope we won't have either, ”explained the KBV boss. Without the announcement of a “day of freedom”, Germany would drag its way through the pandemic indefinitely.
SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach, on the other hand, emphasized that he considered the approach unjustifiable, "just to test out what our health system can withstand, how many patients can be treated intensively". As an epidemiologist, he is concerned with "the suffering of people as strong as to limit it if possible through prevention and vaccination, not in the intensive care unit, ”he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
The hope is also "unrealistic" to want to motivate people to vaccinate by announcing a "Freedom Day".
SPD and Greens warn of "Freedom Day"
The Green health expert Janosch Dahmen also contradicted Gassen. "Now to pretend that the pandemic is a private pleasure and the unvaccinated people are ultimately to blame for it and we could now say goodbye to all protective measures, I think that's cynical," said Dahmen to the broadcaster NDR Info. The claim also contradicts the attitude of the majority of general practitioners. For a relaxation of the measures, a vaccination quota for people over 60 years of age of well over 90 percent would be needed, in the general population for people capable of vaccination of over 80 percent. “It would be good if the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians concentrated on vaccination here, and increased the pace here,” advised Dahmen.
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn sees a need to catch up due to clear regional differences in vaccination rates in Germany. "In the north-west we are almost there, in the south-east we should achieve significantly higher rates," wrote the CDU politician on Twitter on Saturday. According to his information, 62.9 percent of citizens in Germany (52.3 million people) have full vaccination protection, 67.1 percent (55.8 million) received at least one vaccination.