The Hamburg Parliament has declared the Hanseatic city a corona hotspot.

A corresponding motion by the red-green government majority was accepted on Wednesday with the support of the left.

In contrast to the neighboring states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein and most other federal states, protective measures such as a mask requirement in publicly accessible indoor areas and in retail outlets are to be retained beyond next Saturday until the end of April.

AfD and FDP had already announced lawsuits against a hotspot regulation before the decision was made.

The SPD and Greens, on the other hand, referred to an imminent overload of the health system, despite the second-lowest seven-day incidence in Germany, according to the Robert Koch Institute.

Currently, an "extraordinarily high and increasing number of daily new infections is to be lamented," says the resolution, which comes to the conclusion "that in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg an epidemic spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) there is a concrete risk of a dynamically spreading infection situation.”

Students are allowed to remove masks in class

According to the Infection Protection Act, which was amended by the federal government against the resistance of the federal states, this is the prerequisite for maintaining further corona measures.

In addition to the mask requirement, the 2-G-plus rule for those who have been vaccinated or have recovered with an additional negative test at dance events will also be retained - under 2-G plus, however, it is still possible to dance without a mask.

In schools, the mask requirement should generally continue to apply - however, students and teachers should be allowed to take off the masks at their workplaces from Monday in class.

Actually, according to the Infection Protection Act, mask requirements in Germany are only possible to a limited extent from Sunday, for example in clinics or nursing homes, buses and trains.

Mask requirements or 2G and 3G access rules in shops, schools, cultural and leisure facilities, on the other hand, are no longer possible, unless the respective state parliament determines a particularly critical corona situation for a region.

To date, only Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has made use of this hotspot rule.

Critics consider lifting the mask requirement to be risky.