In future, employees who have not been vaccinated or have recovered may only come to work with a negative test certificate.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin In future, employees will only be allowed to appear at their workplace if they have been vaccinated, recovered or tested. The same applies to collective transports of several employees to the workplace. The test result must be proven, a simple self-test is not sufficient.
In addition, employers should again be obliged to enable employees to work from home if there are no operational reasons to the contrary. Employees are obliged to accept the offer if there are no reasons opposing this on their part.
It provides for a formulation aid from the Federal Ministry of Labor for an amendment from the SPD, Greens and FDP to the draft law amending the Infection Protection Act. The drafts of the amendments are available to the Handelsblatt.
With the amendment of the Infection Protection Act, the three parties that are currently negotiating the formation of a traffic light coalition want the epidemic situation of national scope to expire on November 25th. At the same time, however, a new catalog of measures is to be made available to the countries in order to be able to react to the dramatically increasing number of new infections.
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The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported around 45,000 new corona cases on Saturday – around 11,000 more than a week ago. The seven-day incidence, which indicates the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within a week, rose to 277. Berlin exceeded the incidence of 300, Thuringia of 500 and Saxony of 600.
People who have been vaccinated must also be tested in hospitals or care facilities
The 3G rule in the workplace is to be an instrument for fighting pandemics in the future. The wording aid from the executive minister of labor, Hubertus Heil (SPD), stipulates that only those who have been vaccinated, recovered or tested may come to work if it is to be expected that they will meet other people there. Unvaccinated people are allowed to come to work if they want to take advantage of a test or vaccination offer.
Employees in medical, care or handicapped facilities are only allowed to enter if they have been tested. Those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered may do a self-test. A test bid applies to visitors before each visit. The facilities are obliged to offer test facilities.
Employers must monitor compliance with the 3G rule in the workplace and document test results. They can also process the barcode or QR code of a digital vaccination certificate if employees reveal their vaccination status. However, the personal health data must be deleted at the end of March 19, 2022.
The wording aid from the Ministry of Labor does not contain an obligation to provide information on the vaccination status of employees required by employers. Employees are responsible for submitting a negative test certificate.
However, the SPD, Greens and FDP had already declared that the obligation from the occupational health and safety ordinance, according to which employers must give employees a free test offer twice a week, should continue to apply. For example, employees could have themselves tested twice a week in the company and twice a free citizen test, which has been offered again since Saturday.
The SPD, FDP and Greens are also discussing compulsory vaccinations for nursing staff
In hospitals, nursing homes or facilities for the disabled, employers are already allowed to query the vaccination status of their employees. In future, they will have to report the vaccination quota of employees, patients or those in need of care to the competent authority in anonymised form every two weeks. Violations of the 3G rule can result in fines of up to 25,000 euros.
Because a corona infection can be particularly dangerous for patients or residents in hospitals or care facilities, compulsory vaccination for the staff there is also being discussed.
One could not ignore this debate, said FDP health expert Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus on Friday before a meeting of traffic light politicians with scientists, practitioners and experts to accelerate the vaccination rate. But one also has to be careful that if a vaccination is compulsory, not even more nurses “who have to be weighed in gold” say goodbye to their job.
More: Infection Protection Act: CDU makes its own amendments