The President of the German Medical Association, Klaus Reinhardt, has spoken out in favor of reforming the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Reinhardt demanded that a central federal health office should be introduced to coordinate the work of the state offices. 

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in politics.

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"The Robert Koch Institute could work for such a federal authority, but not play its role itself," said Reinhardt on Monday in Berlin at the start of the German Medical Congress. Rather, the RKI needs "an upgrade to a real infection protection authority like in the USA - with technical and also legal independence from the Federal Ministry of Health".

Because the corona numbers are rising again, Reinhardt is relying on a mixture of 2G and 3G rules. According to this, only those who have been vaccinated or recovered should have access to certain locations or, alternatively, those who have been tested. "In this respect, I think it is appropriate - if the numbers continue to rise - if we were to say that the 2G rule applies to larger parts of life together - for example in museums or in restaurants," said Reinhardt on Monday on ZDF. "And if, for example, the 3G rule applied in the workplace, as the Italians have been doing for a long time, and so have the Austrians, then I think that could also be helpful," he said.

Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, more than five million people have died after being infected with the virus.

That comes from data from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which the university published on Monday.

The threshold of four million corona deaths worldwide was


exceeded

at the beginning of July

.

According to the researchers' data, the number of confirmed infections is now more than 246 million cases.

Experts also assume that there are high numbers of unreported cases worldwide, both among the infected and the dead. 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, described reaching the five million mark on Monday as a “painful new threshold”.

"It would be a mistake to believe that the pandemic is over." In Africa, only five percent of the population are fully vaccinated.