In the first waves of the pandemic, the Prime Ministers of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, Markus Söder (CSU) and Winfried Kretschmann (Greens), belonged to the “Team Caution” and pursued a restrictive policy to contain the corona virus.

This camp no longer exists: Kretschmann said last week that he did not want to have any “unfounded exit debates” about an “exit” from Corona policy before Easter.

Ruediger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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Söder, in turn, pleaded on Monday for “the most generous transitional regulations” for compulsory vaccination for healthcare workers.

Söder also spoke of a “de facto” suspension of the implementation of a federal law.

In doing so, he opposed a law that had also been discussed at the suggestion of his health minister and had been passed in the Bundestag and Bundesrat.

In Baden-Württemberg, the green-black state government wants to implement compulsory vaccination for employees in the health sector from March 15 with the help of the health authorities.

On Tuesday, however, Kretschmann had to at least clarify his statement about the "exit debate".

From his point of view, a discussion about an exit was confused with that about possible easing, but Kretschmann had not made the differences sufficiently clear in the past week.

After the coalition partner CDU and the business associations had put pressure on, he tried to clear up the misunderstandings: "Yes, that we will not initiate an exit debate, I said that there should be no easing, was not my statement and my intention.

It was not at all possible to get this hoax out of the world.”

A distinction must be made between “exit strategies” and “relaxation”.

If you talk about an exit from the pandemic, then that means: “No masks, no tests, then the pandemic will be over.” However, he considers such debates to be irresponsible because even the experts cannot yet correctly assess many things, the transition from the pandemic to the endemic is much more complicated than expected.

The scientists also reported this to him: "The technical question of whether the delta variant might come up again after the omicron variant has not yet been clarified," he said.

There has always been talk of relaxing or possibly tightening the infection control measures during the pandemic.

"We've always done that.

On the one hand, opening signals are important, on the other hand we mustn't raise any false expectations, I'm very scrupulous about it," said Kretschmann.

Then he announced a "cautious opening step" that nobody could have expected after Kretschmann's announcement last week: Contact tracing after a positive corona test should only take place in exceptional cases, for example if it is in a discotheque or a nursing home greater incidence of infection.

Inside, 4000 people are allowed to meet again

The FFP-2 mask requirement continues to apply to retail, but the access restrictions under the 3G rule will be lifted provided the first alarm level is not exceeded and the situation in the intensive care units remains controllable.

In addition, outdoor events with 10,000 participants and indoors with 4,000 people are permitted again.

The opposition SPD called the abolition of the 3-G rule in retail a “180-degree turnaround” by the Green Prime Minister.

In the past week, Kretschmann gave the impression that there would be no easing until Easter, said Boris Weirauch, the economic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group.

The FDP parliamentary group leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke demanded that the state should do the same as Bavaria and not implement the facility-related vaccination requirement.

"It is to be feared that nurses who do not want to be vaccinated will migrate to Bavaria and that the nursing shortage will worsen here in Baden-Württemberg."

Kretschmann and his Health Minister Manfred Lucha (Greens) don't want to know anything about this: "It's a federal law.

We'll stick to that, that's what we'll do, in individual cases we'll use the discretionary powers appropriately," said the Prime Minister.

The number of patients in the intensive care units is constantly high, and 277 corona patients were treated there on Tuesday.

According to Minister of Education Theresa Schopper (Greens), the infection process can also be controlled in schools.

Of 1.5 million students, 30,300 are currently infected with the corona virus, and only one school is completely closed.

Around 2,400 teachers are currently not in school service due to a corona infection.

In 80 cases, the school administrations had to impose fines because parents had not sent their students to class in protest against the pandemic policy.

In two cases, parents are said to have run illegal schools to circumvent the corona measures.

Health Minister Lucha was unable to name the national average vaccination rates for health care workers, there are care facilities with a vaccination rate of 95 percent, in other facilities it is significantly lower.

The public prosecutor's office is investigating two nursing homes because there had been an accumulation of fatal corona courses in the facilities due to an extremely low vaccination rate among the residents.