In his efforts to improve vaccination readiness in Germany, Jens Spahn could not emphasize often enough on Thursday that people who have been vaccinated twice are well protected against the delta variant of the corona virus.
Indeed, there are now reliable data for this assumption.
Nevertheless, a number of people who have been vaccinated twice and who have recovered are currently trapped in their apartments because the federal government, for example, had declared their holiday destination Portugal to be a virus variant area at short notice.
Unlike returnees from other risk areas, you cannot even test yourself free from the fortnightly quarantine.
Vacation versus class?
It is high time that this regulation for returnees from "Delta countries" was lifted.
Because the federal government runs the risk of squandering the understanding that the majority of the German population still has for the policy of caution - although many other EU countries are taking a more lax course.
It remains correct not to jeopardize the enormous progress made in the fight against the pandemic by introducing virus variants from abroad, against which the previous vaccines may not help.
The vacation of individuals cannot be taken more important than, for example, the regular school lessons of everyone after the vacation.
In any case, the travel world champion Germany would only be put to a really tough corona test this summer if the incidence suddenly rose sharply or new, as yet unexplored variants should suddenly appear in a direct neighboring country or a particularly important destination for tourists.
Federal Minister of the Interior Seehofer has pointed out that such a situation could occur “weekly”.
Then politicians would no longer be able to rest on the airport controls, which are now well organized compared to last summer, but would have to monitor the testing, possibly even the quarantine of hundreds of thousands of car travelers on a large scale. Hopefully this will not happen. Hopefully the plans for this have continued to develop as Spahn and Seehofer revealed on Thursday.