Boris Palmer calls for comprehensive corona tests for nursing staff

Icon: enlarge

The Mayor of Tübingen Boris Palmer (archive): Letter to care services

The Mayor of Tübingen Boris Palmer (Greens) calls for comprehensive Covid-19 tests for employees in the elderly. In Tübingen he wants to have such preventive tests carried out every 14 days from now on - at the expense of the city treasury. This emerges from a letter from Palmer to several private and church care services that SPIEGEL has received.

In the letter, Palmer criticizes the green-black state government under Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) because their test strategy has so far not provided for systematic examinations of the nursing staff. Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) "gave the district health authorities the competence to order appropriate screenings and thus secure funding from the health insurers," said Palmer.  

In fact, at the beginning of June, Spahn had stipulated in an ordinance that retrospectively from May 14th "tests could be carried out in nursing homes and care services regardless of any cases". "The tests are paid for by the statutory health insurance companies," says the legal standard. The Bundestag created the legal requirements for this in mid-May.

"The respective epidemiological situation" must be taken into account

However, Spahn's regulation also states that the "respective epidemiological situation" on site must be taken into account. A spokesman for the Baden-Wuerttemberg Ministry of Social Affairs told SPIEGEL: "Against the background of the currently low incidence of Sars-CoV-2 infections, the chance of detecting infected people in the course of monitoring examinations is to be assessed as low". The country bears the costs of these examinations.

According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, tests for Covid-19 are to be carried out in Baden-Württemberg when they are admitted to an inpatient care facility. After the summer holidays, the nursing and medical staff in the country will also be tested more, but not nationwide. Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Social Affairs, Manne Lucha (Greens), said at the end of June that prophylactic testing was "not automatically promising".

Palmer believes the assessment that the epidemiological situation in the country does not give rise to nationwide tests "is wrong and in any case out of date in view of the currently increasing number of infections in the region", as he writes in his letter to the care services. In the districts of Reutlingen and Tübingen there were around 20 new infections in one week.

"People in need of care need maximum protection"

Nursing and old people's homes have repeatedly become corona hotspots across Germany in recent months. In the Hanns-Lilje-Heim in Wolfsburg, for example, almost 50 residents died from or with the virus in the course of a wave of infections. In many places in Germany, homes are currently under quarantine due to acute Covid 19 cases. Older people are isolated, and their carers are sometimes stigmatized in the population.

In order to prevent infection, there are visitor restrictions in the individual federal states. In Baden-Württemberg, for example, senior citizens in old people's and nursing homes can generally be visited by a maximum of two people per day. Such measures are not enough for the Mayor of Tübingen, Palmer. "People in need of care are a high-risk group per se and need maximum protection against infection," says his letter to the care services. 

As recently as April, Palmer had received a lot of criticism because in an interview he appeared to be questioning whether it was even worth fighting for the lives of the elderly and the sick. On "Sat.1-Frühstücksfernsehen" he had said that people in Germany might be rescued who would be dead in six months anyway - because of their age and previous illnesses. He later apologized for what he said.

Palmer's current advance seems to manifest his personal dilemma once again: While numerous people in Germany - and within his party - now perceive him primarily as a bully who regularly causes outrage, the mayor in Tübingen does a good job from the point of view of many citizens.

At the end of May, the "City Seniors Council of Tübingen" asked Palmer in a letter to support nationwide tests in nursing homes. In the neighboring district of Reutlingen, 71 percent of those who died from or with the coronavirus were residents of nursing homes, the letter said. Palmer had replied that he would regulate the tests in the Tübingen urban area in consultation with the local council if the state came to a conclusively negative decision.

From now on, the city of Tübingen will assume the costs for the tests of the nursing staff "until further notice", as stated in the mayor's letter. An invoice with the name of the employee is sufficient as proof. "In my opinion, respect for human dignity forbids false thrift at this point," said Palmer.