A group of members of the Bundestag led by the FDP politician Andrew Ullmann presented their draft law for the statutory regulation of vaccinations on Wednesday.

The draft stipulates that all adults who have not yet been vaccinated against Corona or have recovered from an infection must have had a medical vaccination consultation by September 15th - ideally in a vaccination center, as Ullmann said.

The health insurance companies should inform their insured persons about the corona vaccination beforehand.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in Politics.

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Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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If the repeated expansion of the vaccination campaign does not lead to higher vaccination quotas, the Bundestag can, in a second step, make vaccination compulsory for people aged 50 and over.

The obligation to vaccinate should then come into force “in good time before a further wave of infections is to be expected in the autumn and winter of 2022/2023”, as the draft law states.

The basis for this should be “the infection situation and the status of the vaccination campaign”.

The draft does not name any specific thresholds.

The MEPs who support the draft are against the introduction of compulsory vaccinations from the age of 18.

A vaccination requirement for everyone is "not an alternative, because an age-related vaccination requirement is already suitable for preventing the health system from being overloaded," says the draft.

Previously, seven MPs from the traffic light parties had presented a draft law that would make vaccination compulsory for all adults.

According to this, the health insurance companies should inform all adults about counseling and vaccination options by May 15th, and from October 1st all adults must be able to prove that they have been vaccinated three times or have recovered.

The Union faction in the Bundestag has introduced the draft for a "Vaccination Prevention Act" that provides for vaccinations in several stages - but only if this is epidemiologically necessary.

The exact requirements initially remained open.

A fourth group of MPs around the FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki rejects any form of compulsory vaccination, as does the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

Doctors: It is up to politicians to decide whether vaccinations are compulsory

The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) made it clear on Wednesday that only politicians should and should decide on compulsory vaccination.

However, there is still a lot of ambiguity.

"For Omicron, the compulsory vaccination comes too late, and we don't have a vaccine for other variants yet," said KBV boss Andreas Gassen of the FAZ. "Perhaps some kind of reserve legislation makes sense, but that's not easy to convey."

Gassen also has doubts about the facility-related vaccination requirement for medical and nursing staff, which is due to come into force in mid-March.

This was decided on the condition that vaccinated people had sterile immunity, i.e. they could not infect patients or those in need of care.

However, this is not the case with Omikron and possibly also with other variants.

"This eliminates the main argument that compulsory vaccination protects others," said the doctor.

"If ten percent of the staff could not work in the future due to a lack of vaccination, that would be a serious blow to care." According to a quick survey by the KBV, 94 percent of contract doctors have proof of immunity, i.e. are vaccinated or have recovered.

Every third practice fears supply restrictions,

In the meantime, the green health politician and doctor Janosch Dahmen has rejected the criticism of the statutory and private health insurance companies on the draft law on general vaccination for adults that he helped initiate.

It corresponds to the statutory mandate of the health insurance companies to actively participate in the goal of vaccination prevention.

However, it is not about the fact that they are responsible for levying fines or otherwise have to act as “vaccination police”, as the associations of statutory and private insurance companies had criticized.

It is a misunderstanding that companies would have to report non-vaccinated people to regulatory agencies, but the federal states could set up central offices for this under the present proposal.

However, it is quite possible for the insurance companies to determine the vaccination status of their own insured persons and it also makes sense