Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) rules out another corona lockdown in Germany.
"We must and will prevent a new lockdown," said Altmaier of "Bild am Sonntag".
In his words, this would be “devastating for many shops and restaurants that have been closed for months”.
The Minister of Economic Affairs currently sees no need for further measures against the coronavirus: "As long as there is no threat of overloading the health system, there is no reason for new measures or even a lockdown." Vaccinated or younger people usually have no symptoms at all if they were infected, the intensive care beds Capacity in Germany is far from its utilization limit.
However, Altmaier thinks the vaccination campaign is too slow.
"We have to accelerate the vaccination campaign again strongly," he demanded.
"Wherever people come together in public, whether in the beer garden or in the pedestrian zone, vaccinations should be offered." The CDU politician also advocated that "mobile vaccination teams address people in cafés and restaurants and vaccinate them directly on site".
Schwesig and Dreyer call for different warning values
After months of strong decline, the spread of the coronavirus in Germany is now increasing again, albeit at a relatively low level. The reason for the increase in incidence values is the highly contagious delta variant of the virus, which, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), is now responsible for more than 50 percent of new infections.
After the Rhineland-Palatinate head of government Malu Dreyer, the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig, is pushing for a new "warning value" to assess the Corona situation. "I expressly support the proposal that the federal and state governments agree on a new national warning value for the corona situation," said the SPD politician in the newspapers of the Funke media group (Sunday). "In the future, we will have to take greater account of vaccinations and hospital burdens."
Schwesig referred to the traffic light model applicable in her state, which takes into account the seven-day incidence, the number of Covid patients in the hospital and the utilization of the intensive care units. Dreyer had previously called for a "new warning value" to assess the corona situation in Germany. With increasing vaccination rates, the seven-day incidence is much less informative today than it was six months ago. However, the federal government has already announced that further values such as hospital admissions will be given greater consideration in the future.