With his gloomy prediction, Hesse's Prime Minister Volker Bouffier is likely to be right: It will not be the last time in this pandemic that the Bundestag and Bundesrat will have to improve and re-sharpen the new Infection Protection Act, which has not been adequately equipped by the traffic lights.
Because while the delta wave not only “rolls like a tsunami” through Saxony, as Bouffier's colleague Kretschmer described the emergency situation drastically, Germany is facing the next visitation from January onwards due to the even more contagious omicron variant.
It is difficult to understand that the “facility-related” vaccination obligation for staff in old people's homes and clinics comes into force two and a half months later. Markus Söder had already brought such a measure into play at the beginning of the vaccination campaign. At that time, many employees in nursing homes had initially turned down the offer to be immunized with the vaccines developed in record time, thus protecting themselves and, above all, the elderly residents they cared for and who were susceptible to the virus from illness and death. The vaccination rate there then increased significantly through information and appeals. But to this day there are no reliable figures on how many employees and how many of the people they care for are still unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. There is no central vaccination register like in Austria,but would be urgently needed.
Decision-making in politics was also delayed by the concern that compulsory vaccination for these professional groups would force employees to resign en masse.
In France and Italy, this concern has now turned out to be unfounded.
Perhaps, however, in addition to the fear of Omikron, the fear of sanctions in the course of the imposition of a general vaccination obligation drives many undecided into the vaccination centers and doctor's offices.
Then the debate alone would have achieved the goal.