JEvery infection chain should be traced, said Chancellor Angela Merkel after the cabinet meeting, at which a large package of measures was decided. The law provides for measures to keep the infection process under control and still restart the “normal economic life”, as the draft states. A large number of measures have been announced in the past few days. We give an overview of the extent to which test capacities are increased, where containment scouts help and how the role of local health authorities is changing.
What are the containment scouts doing?
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The Federal Ministry of Health is spending a total of 11.25 million euros to support the 375 German health authorities in finding contacts for people with corona infection. At the Robert Koch Institute, which reports directly to the ministry, helpers are currently being trained, who are supposed to relieve some of the staff in the offices of making calls. In total, Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) wants to put together 105 teams of five people each. The federal government apparently had no problems in getting the 525 helpers needed. The Federal Office of Administration, which was responsible for the tender, reported that it had already submitted more than 11,000 applications before the application deadline.
Interested parties could register there until the end of March. The tender was aimed primarily at “students who are willing to take a vacation semester”, as it says. Interested parties can work full-time as “support personnel crisis management” at a location of their choice for up to six months, the state pays gross 2325 euros per month for this. Applicants should have “resilience and stress tolerance”, as stated in the announcement. They should ask Covid-19 patients about contacts on the phone and then call them. The Robert Koch Institute trains those interested via the Internet, especially in how to use the software.
The first containment scouts have already started work in some cities and municipalities, especially in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. There, the helpers are already deployed in a number of cities and municipalities, including Dortmund, Bochum, Düsseldorf and Münster. The team of five helpers in Gütersloh has been working since last Friday to research contact persons for infected people on the phone.
Will the health authorities master the situation?
The situation in the health offices has improved significantly in recent weeks thanks to the ban on contacts. The head of the Cologne Health Office, Johannes Nießen, told the F.A.Z. that the situation was much better under control than at the beginning of the pandemic. “The contact-reducing measures are having an effect,” said Nießen. “We have doubled in personnel to a total of 700 employees.” The health office in Cologne has been transformed into a “corona office”. Other municipal authorities describe the same. In Hanover, Munich and Frankfurt, given the easing, the number of cases is not expected to increase – however, always on the premise that citizens adhere to the contact reduction requirement.
Health departments that cannot provide follow-up in their community or county will have to report this to state regulators so that they can remedy the situation. 40 jobs are to be created at the Robert Koch Institute; one employee should maintain contact with up to ten health offices. In how many cases it has so far been possible to understand the infection chains, the health authorities cannot quantify. On request, the local authority in Frankfurt points out that the statistical data on the clarified infection chains are not available. “There are always outbreaks and shorter infection chains with a spread in families,” it says.
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