Health Minister: Boosted people should be exempted from compulsory testing

With a rapid expansion of booster vaccinations, the federal and state governments want to slow down the wave of infections with the Omikron variant of the corona virus.

The health ministers agreed on Tuesday evening to lift the compulsory test for people with booster vaccinations for 2G-plus concepts.

Bavaria's Minister of Health, Klaus Holetschek, announced this after the meeting.

Exceptions apply to nursing homes and hospitals, for example.

This should encourage more people to get the third vaccination as soon as possible.

With the booster vaccination, there is only a low risk of getting infected, said Lauterbach. In federal states such as Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate, there is already relief for people who have been vaccinated three times. In hospitals and care facilities, however, they should also have to submit a negative test in order to protect the particularly vulnerable groups of people there.

The Frankfurt virologist Sandra Cisek criticized the planned relief for triple vaccinations. "What an insane idea in the current situation and the current threat posed by Omikron," she wrote on Twitter. The Association of Medical Officials also criticized that it was too early to exempt people who have been vaccinated three times from the obligation to test. The infectiologist Mathias Pletz from the Jena University Hospital, on the other hand, called it sensible “that the life of the boosted patients is made a little easier at this point”.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, according to Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU), people who have been vaccinated twice can be boosted after just four weeks.

But there is no explicit recommendation for it, he said.

The President of the German Society for Immunology, Christine Falk, criticized this time gap as too short.

Lauterbach made a similar statement.

In Austria, the National Vaccination Committee (NIG) is likely to recommend that children from the age of twelve also get a boost after four months this Wednesday.

This was announced by Minister of Health Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens).   

The new Corona Expert Council of the Federal Government will present an assessment of the Omikron variant before Christmas, it was said in Berlin meanwhile. This should be the basis for further political action. According to the will of the federal government, travelers from virus variant areas should in future have to do a PCR test after arrival in Germany in addition to a corona test before departure. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the state government agreed with the carnival organizers to cancel meetings and balls indoors. The Robert Koch Institute reported 30,823 new infections within 24 hours on Tuesday. The nationwide seven-day incidence fell further to 375.

Meanwhile, there are doubts whether the Boston campaign will be successful in Germany.

Lauterbach is said to have said according to information from "Spiegel" that there would be a shortage of vaccines in the next year.

“Far too little vaccine was bought for the entire first quarter.

The quantities are not enough to drive the booster vaccination campaign, ”he is supposed to have said.