2-G-Plus rule and booster: three federal states exempt people with a third vaccination from compulsory testing

Those who have already been boosted will be exempted from the obligation to test from Saturday in Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate.

People vaccinated against Corona three times could then visit facilities with the 2G-Plus rule without a test, said the Ministry of Social Affairs in Hanover on Friday.

You do not need any more test "for example when you visit a restaurant or when entering a fitness studio," said the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD).

"People who have already been boosted no longer have to present a current negative corona test wherever the 2-G-Plus rule applies - for example in restaurants, in the zoo or at leisure and cultural events," also shared the head of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Health, Uwe Lahl, in Stuttgart.

In the three federal states, proof of vaccinations is sufficient.

In Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, the amended corona ordinance will come into force on Saturday.

The Lower Saxony ordinance is to be changed from next week, but the omission of testing for people vaccinated three times is to be implemented from Saturday.

Violations of the mandatory test according to the current regulation by boosters would be tolerated until the amended regulation came into force, it said.

New tightening in Baden-Württemberg

Lower Saxony reacts to findings that the risk of infection and transmission after three vaccinations is "extremely low".

In addition, the new regulation should help to relieve "the heavily used test capacities".

"The booster vaccination increases the vaccination protection enormously," explained Dreyer.

In Rhineland-Palatinate, the 2-G-Plus rule applies throughout the interior from the weekend.

In Lower Saxony it has been in effect in many places since Wednesday.

In Baden-Württemberg, the new ordinance - as in other federal states - also brings a number of tightenings into force.

For sports and cultural events, the current state-wide alert level II has an upper limit of 750 people - which currently amounts to ghost games in the Bundesliga, for example.

For gastronomy including hotel catering, 2-G-Plus generally applies from Saturday, apart from the exception for boosted customers, Christmas markets that are still open, clubs and discos will be closed.

Overloaded laboratories: RKI fears falsified figures

After a brief interruption, the nationwide seven-day incidence of new corona infections rose again.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Friday morning, the value rose to 442.1.

As the RKI further announced, citing data from the health authorities, 74,352 new infections were recorded within 24 hours.

Germany has thus exceeded the number of six million registered infections.

The health authorities have reported 6,051,560 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

The institute put the number of people recovered from illness caused by the coronavirus in Germany at around 5,023,200.

That too is a new high.

The total number of corona deaths in Germany rose by 390 to 102,568.

The seven-day incidence indicates the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within a week. The value has risen rapidly since the beginning of November. As a result, new highs were recorded every day. On Tuesday, the RKI reported a decrease in the incidence for the first time in more than three weeks. By Thursday it had dropped from 452.4 to 439.2.

The strong increase of the past few weeks has not continued, writes the RKI in its weekly report published on Thursday. This could be a first indication of a "slightly weakening dynamic in the transmission process due to the significantly intensified measures to reduce contact". But it is also possible that regional capacities in the public health service and laboratories are exhausted. That would mean that not all cases might be discovered or recorded and the numbers would actually be higher. The authority fears that there will be more serious illnesses and deaths in view of the current developments.

Because the number of PCR tests carried out and the need for sequencing is increasing every week and is a burden on the laboratories, the RKI also calls for "prioritization of the use of PCR tests in accordance with the national test strategy".

Depending on the regional availability, the use of the tests should be critically examined and, if necessary, limited, for example in the intended reduction of the quarantine time for contact persons and in the case of de-isolation.

Depending on the case, high-quality antigen tests could be used instead.

On November 18, the federal and state governments set the so-called hospitalization incidence as the decisive yardstick for tightening the corona measures.

This value indicates how many people per 100,000 inhabitants are in hospital within seven days because of a corona infection.

From a value of three, the 2G rule applies across the board for events in a federal state.

This means that only those who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus and those who have recovered from Covid-19 are allowed.

According to the RKI, the nationwide hospitalization incidence on Wednesday was 5.47.