Berlin MPs from the SPD, Greens and FDP are determined to quickly initiate compulsory vaccination against Covid-19. The group of seven around the health politicians Heike Baehrens (SPD), Janosch Dahmen (Greens) and the right-wing politician Katrin Helling-Plahr (FDP) presented their draft law on Friday.
According to their ideas, a general obligation to vaccinate should apply from October 1st. Anyone who has been vaccinated or vaccinated three times and recovered from Covid disease meets the requirements.
A comprehensive information offensive is planned before vaccination becomes mandatory. The sick classes should inform the insured persons by mid-May about the dangers of Covid-19 disease, about vaccination offers and the mandatory vaccination that will apply from autumn. The aim is to address those groups that have so far been difficult to reach, for example through multilingual information offerings.
The MPs want to give citizens who have not been sufficiently vaccinated so far the opportunity to prove three vaccinations by October. If they cannot do this, the responsible regulatory authority should be informed and a fine procedure initiated. The law will initially be limited to the end of next year.
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“Our goal is to finally stop chasing and get ahead of the situation,” said the deputy chairwoman of the SPD parliamentary group, Dagmar Schmidt, when the draft was presented. They want to “find a way out of the endless restriction spiral,” emphasized Helling-Plahr.
Three quarters of the population have basic Covid protection
According to the draft, doctors, pharmacists or the insured themselves can report the vaccination status to the health insurance company. Cashiers such as TK CEO Jens Baas had already expressed skepticism if the cash registers were to take on “a kind of police function”.
SPD health politician Baehrens emphasized, however, that the enforcement of the obligation to provide evidence of the vaccination status is of course the responsibility of the state authorities. However, the cash registers should report to the regulatory authorities if they do not have proof of vaccination from insured persons. They should be financially compensated for the additional effort.
Violations of the obligation to vaccinate could result in fines of up to 2,500 euros under the Infection Protection Act, explained Green MP Till Steffen. However, since a fine of 250 euros or more requires an examination of the income and financial situation, he assumes that the penalty, which is at the discretion of the regulatory authorities, will tend to be below this threshold. A fine can also be imposed more than once.
The draft law provides for an authorization for the federal government to enforce simplifications by ordinance. If, for example, one vaccination should be sufficient according to scientific knowledge, the government could decide that. On the other hand, only the Bundestag can decide on tightening, for example the need for a fourth vaccination, emphasized Dahmen.
Vaccination rate is slowing down
Recently, the pace of vaccination in Germany has slowed down. 231,000 doses were administered on Thursday, significantly fewer than in the previous weeks on a Thursday, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Friday. At least 45.9 million citizens, or 55.2 percent of the population, have received a booster shot and thus meet the criteria for the planned vaccination requirement.
62.1 million people or 74.7 percent of the population have received basic protection, which usually requires two injections. 63.3 million people or 76.1 percent of citizens have been vaccinated once.
Union presents counter-model
The Union faction in the Bundestag has drawn up its own draft for a so-called Vaccination Prevention Act. According to information from the ARD capital studio, he provides a vaccination plan that is staggered according to groups of people if the corona situation continues to worsen.
Accordingly, over 60-year-olds should first be obliged, in a second stage then people over 50. Then employees of critical infrastructure are named as well as employees in schools, daycare centers and the police. More details should be announced later in the day.
There is also an application by MPs around Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) to waive general vaccination. Another parliamentary group is campaigning for mandatory vaccinations from the age of 50.
The members of the Bundestag should then vote on the group motions free of the pressure of their parliamentary groups. FDP faction leader Christian Dürr assumes that Parliament will decide by the end of March. “We will stick to the schedule, so we will make a decision at the end of this first quarter,” Dürr said on Friday on ZDF’s “Morgenmagazin”.
Constitutional Court waves through partial vaccination requirement
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also emphasized in his inaugural speech in the Bundesrat that in view of the possible increase in the number of infections in the coming autumn and winter, “general vaccination also makes sense”. At the same time, he warned the federal states to implement the compulsory vaccination for health and nursing staff, which will take effect from mid-March.
The Federal Constitutional Court had previously rejected urgent applications against the facility-related compulsory vaccination on Friday morning. It can therefore come into force until a decision has been made in the main proceedings. Green health politician Dahmen welcomed the news from Karlsruhe. Now it is important to implement compulsory vaccination for nursing and health workers nationwide from mid-March,” he told the German Press Agency. The CDU and CSU would have to implement the law in the federal states they govern. The Union’s “party-political hiccups” have seriously damaged the acceptance of compulsory vaccination in recent days, said Dahmen.
More on this: How can the general obligation to vaccinate be checked? Health insurance companies don’t want to play auxiliary police