In Brandenburg, medical staff are still working without a corona vaccination.
Photo: dpa/Frank Rumpenhorst
–
235 corona patients are currently being treated in Brandenburg’s hospitals. 26 are in intensive care and 12 are being ventilated. The healthcare system is far from being overwhelmed. Only 3.6 percent of the available intensive care beds are occupied by corona patients. Up to ten percent everything is still in the green. Only then does the traffic light turn yellow, and then red at 20 percent.
“The state government still believes that we are in a dangerous pandemic,” mocked state parliamentarian Daniela Oeynhausen (AfD). The red-black-green cabinet extended the mask requirement on buses and trains until July 20th. But wearing a “white bag” in hot summer temperatures is “no fun,” said Oeynhausen, who is a doctor by profession. You saw old people with FFP2 masks and beads of sweat on their foreheads on the train. In such cases, as she learned during her studies, the following applies: »Open the windows and let in fresh air«.
And so the AfD applied in the state parliament to lift the mask requirement. The vaccination obligation for employees of clinics, medical practices, nursing homes and nursing services should be cashed in at the same time. The state parliament rejected both applications on Friday. “You make me aggressive inside,” said Green MP Carla Kniestedt. Especially now, when the trains are packed with the cheap 9-euro ticket, you get “very, very close” on the train. That is why the mask requirement in local public transport remains. According to a survey, two-thirds of Germans are in favor of it.
MP Andreas Büttner (left) described the AfD’s initiative as a “populist quark”. He exclaimed indignantly: “How many deaths do you need before they finally get it?” Oeynhausen had said that there were cases of corona, but they rarely ended in the intensive care unit. For most Brandenburgers, the infection is a harmless “seasonal respiratory disease”.
But the number of infections has not only been increasing rapidly for three weeks. There are more infected people in the hospitals again and deaths are being reported again – on Friday, for example, two from Havelland and one from Potsdam-Mittelmark. “We are currently in the next wave,” emphasized Health Minister Ursula Nonnemacher (Greens), also a doctor by profession. Medical staff should be vaccinated, she said. However, around 7,800 employees in clinics and in care have not submitted proof of vaccination, although they are obliged to do so. This puts the vaccination rate at 92 percent, in the entire population it is only 68 percent. For the remaining eight percent, the so-called facility-related compulsory vaccination is currently not enforced. So far, the health authorities of the districts and urban districts have made use of their discretion and have not issued a single ban on employment and, to the best of their knowledge, have not yet imposed any fines, explains Minister Nonnemacher.
The SPD deputy Björn Lüttmann counted points that speak for or against the factual suspension of the facility-related compulsory vaccination. Actually, it should only be a preliminary step to the general obligation to vaccinate, on which the Bundestag could not agree. The vaccination does not reliably protect against infection, but the risk of infection is reduced by 21 percent with the second vaccination and by a further 20 percent with the third, said Lüttmann, citing a Norwegian study. Lüttmann concluded his remarks with the words: “This debate belongs in the Bundestag, not in the state parliament.”
But the Bundestag has already rejected two attempts to abolish compulsory vaccination, MP Ronny Kretschmer (left) reminded. He talked about his grandmother, who will soon be 94 years old and is cared for at home by a nursing service. Kretschmer said he was very interested in the nursing staff who came there wearing masks, disinfecting themselves and being vaccinated. In this particular case, fortunately, that is the case. Kretschmer is a nurse himself and can no longer hear the AfD’s “conspiracy litany” that the vaccine is allegedly not safe. However, the politician did not fail to mention justified criticism of the institution-related vaccination requirement: that it is so bureaucratic that even the caretaker of a nursing home has to be vaccinated and that it presses the medical staff of all people, who in the corona pandemic are “at the forefront Front«, initially even completely unprotected.
This compulsory vaccination is limited to the end of the year.
–
