Corona report: Lauterbach: Report is “not a Bible to quote from”

Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach fears that the corona situation will worsen significantly in autumn.

"It will be a difficult autumn, we have to be prepared," said the SPD politician on Friday evening in the ARD "Tagesthemen".

He believes that "we will have great difficulties with the BA.5 variant that is now spreading here".

He expects a very high number of cases, which could also lead to an overload of the critical infrastructure.

"That is my fear," said the minister.

On Friday, a committee of experts presented a long-awaited report on the effectiveness of previous corona protection measures.

Accordingly, protective measures such as wearing a mask can continue to be helpful against the corona virus.

However, behind many other well-known conditions, the expert committee puts big question marks, due to a lack of sufficient data, no reliable assessments are possible.

Lauterbach admitted on ARD that so far "the data has not been perfect".

With a pandemic radar in hospitals and wastewater monitoring, he expects better data in September.

The report is "not a Bible to quote from" and "not the last word," emphasized the Minister of Health.

In addition to the report, there are numerous international studies, the expertise of the company's own expert council and international scientists, which must be taken into account, explained Lauterbach.

“The report is a piece of a puzzle in a larger puzzle.” With Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP), he now wants “to come to regulations very quickly that will better protect citizens in autumn and winter,” Lauterbach affirmed.

Lauterbach: Lockdown "we would not repeat"

"In the report, many measures were evaluated according to the motto 'They help, but we don't know how much they help,'" said the minister on Friday evening on ZDF's "heute journal". International literature and other expert assessments would therefore now be included Consultations on a new infection protection law included Lauterbach ruled out a lockdown like at the beginning of the pandemic: "We would not repeat that."

In the meantime, a debate has broken out in the traffic light coalition about the consequences of the report by the Corona Expert Council.

Lauterbach said that he and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) had already started advising on the reform of the Infection Protection Act on Friday.

While Lauterbach assumes an agreement in the coming weeks, Buschmann will only see this after the summer break.

The corona protection measures that were slimmed down by the traffic light coalition in spring expire on September 23.

Several FDP members of the Bundestag such as Frank Schäffler and Wolfgang Kubicki called for the resignation of the President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, because the report criticized serious shortcomings in the work of the RKI.

The Greens and the Minister of Health immediately contradicted this.

"He has always done the job well and has my complete trust," emphasized the SPD politician in relation to Wieler.

The Advisory Council is already the second body of the Federal Government to present an assessment of the Corona policy and proposals.

Buschmann pointed out that the report shares his criticism that the declaration of the epidemic situation of national scope used by the former black-red government as the basis for restrictions is legally problematic.

Health Minister Lauterbach said that the report "is impressive" and is now being incorporated into future corona policy, along with other factors. The expert council had previously called for much stricter corona measures. Lauterbach spoke of a difficult situation in autumn.

The multidisciplinary Council of Experts recommends that in future a mask requirement should only be imposed indoors.

The experts write that there is a higher risk of infection there.

"A general recommendation to wear FFP2 masks cannot be derived from the data so far," it says. The meaning of 2G/3G rules, which in the pandemic linked attending events to vaccination or testing, is also only limited The effect is high in the first few weeks, but then the protective effect of the vaccinations decreases.

The experts assess the effect of school closures as ambiguous because several measures come together.

However, the interdisciplinary group of experts called for a better evaluation of the effect of corona protection measures, especially on children.

Lockdowns are welcomed in the first phase of a pandemic.

"The longer a lockdown lasts and the fewer people are willing to support the measure, the smaller the effect and the more serious the unintended consequences," the experts warn. "The effectiveness of a lockdown is therefore in the early phase of the Containments most effective, but quickly lose the effect again."

This also applies to contact tracing.

On Friday, the RKI again reported an increasing seven-day incidence of 682.7.

The value indicates how many people get infected in 100,000 people within a week.

113,099 new infections and 84 more deaths were registered.

The number of corona intensive care patients in hospitals rises to 963.