Saxony’s Minister of Health Petra Köpping (SPD) announced that the currently valid Corona emergency ordinance would be extended. It should not expire on January 9th as planned, but will apply until January 14th.
The background for the extension of the existing regulation is the data situation, which according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is not solid due to the holidays, said the minister. In addition, the federal-state consultations are to be awaited.
The assessment of the Federal Government’s Expert Council, which met on Tuesday afternoon, should serve as the basis. It is still unclear whether there will be a joint decision by the committee. The RKI, which is part of the expert council, drew up an assessment on Tuesday and introduced it to the deliberations.
Shorter absences are under discussion, especially for employees in important supply areas, in order to avoid too many staff absences. These include hospitals, the police, fire brigades, rescue services, telecommunications, electricity and water supply. Experts from science and the German Foundation for Patient Protection consider a reduction to be justifiable, however, only in combination with negative PCR tests.
The Berlin virologist Christian Drosten, who is also a member of the Expert Council, recently said on Deutschlandfunk that with a free test, infected people could be viewed as non-infectious even after a few days after the self-isolation period. He is assuming that there could also be shortenings in the quarantine regulation in the future, even if “a few cases” could then be overlooked.
The fear is of insufficient staff
Concerns about staff absences are not unfounded. In Great Britain, several hospitals have had to declare a disaster due to the rapidly increasing number of illnesses. At least six hospital foundations, some of which include several clinics, have decided to take this step. Hospitals declare a disaster when those responsible are of the opinion that they can no longer guarantee necessary treatments.
The Omikron variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in Germany – hospital chains are sounding the alarm in Great Britain.
(Photo: dpa)
In the country, the omicron variant already accounts for the majority of all infections. In Spain, because of the variant, the number of registered new infections per 100,000 inhabitants rose to the new high of 1348 within a week. In Germany, too, the number of cases has been rising again for around a week. The proportion of the Omikron variant in new infections is also growing.
The number of reliably proven and probable omicron cases transmitted to the RKI had more than tripled within a week. 35,529 would now be assigned to the new corona variant, it said on Tuesday.
“The quarantine regulations must now be adjusted as quickly as possible so that security of supply can be guaranteed at all times in the Omikron wave,” pleaded the Federation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA). “A shortened quarantine must be possible, especially for asymptomatic infected people and contact persons, if our infrastructure is otherwise at risk.”
Meanwhile, experts were not concerned about a new corona variant discovered in France. “We should observe this as well as other variants, but there is no reason to be particularly concerned about this variant,” said Richard Neher, an expert on virus variants at the University of Basel, the German press agency.
B.1.640.2 does not seem to spread strongly so far. The variant is “one among many”. The US epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding wrote on Twitter: “I’m not yet very worried about B.1.640.2. I doubt that it will prevail over Omikron or Delta. “
French researchers led by Didier Raoult from the IHU Méditerranée Infection Institute had detected the new variant in twelve patients in south-east France. The patient, who was probably infected first in France, came back from a trip from Cameroon. The relevant study has not yet been reviewed by experts and has not been published in any specialist journal.
The number of short-time workers is increasing sharply
On the labor market, the uncertainty about the further course of the pandemic is reflected in a renewed increase in short-time work. According to the Federal Employment Agency (BA), employers reported short-time work for around 300,000 employees in December, around twice as many as in the previous month. The increase is mainly due to the hotel and restaurant industry.
With the extension of the special rules for short-time work until the end of March, the federal government set the course in good time in order to survive a renewed aggravation of the situation without major job losses, said Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD). In addition to easier access to short-time work, the increase in short-time work allowance is extended to up to 87 percent of the lost net wage.
Both of these mean that the BA’s budgeted deficit of 800 million euros for the current year will probably grow to 1.2 to 1.3 billion euros, said BA boss Detlef Scheele at the presentation of the labor market data. Neither Scheele nor Heil anticipate major disruptions from Omikron on the labor market, although the pandemic situation naturally creates uncertainty.
However, he does not assume that there will be another nationwide lockdown anywhere in Germany, emphasized Scheele. The Minister of Labor sees the risk that the upswing could be delayed somewhat by the spread of the virus variant.
Employment situation but nothing to worry about
In terms of employment policy, Germany is currently well on the way to leaving the corona crisis behind, even if all the consequences of the pandemic have not yet been shaken off. “The German job market may have been shaken by the corona pandemic, but we were able to avert a major quake,” said Heil.
“All in all, the development of the labor market in the course of 2021 was good,” emphasized Scheele. Although the number of unemployed has fallen slightly year-on-year to a good 2.6 million, it is still above the level of the pre-crisis year 2019. The BA is particularly concerned about the continued high number of 977,000 long-term unemployed, which is around 300,000 more than the lowest level in December 2019.
Employment subject to social security has developed positively, which in October 2021 was almost 34.4 million employees, higher than ever before. Last year, youth unemployment in Germany fell to its lowest level since reunification, as Heil and Scheele pointed out. The fact that, seasonally adjusted, unemployment and underemployment fell again in December, although the corona situation is worsening again, fits into the positive picture.
The BA boss currently sees no reason to correct the autumn forecast of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). The BA think tank assumes that the number of unemployed will fall by an average of 290,000 this year compared to the previous year. The number of people in employment is expected to rise by 560,000.
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