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Vaccination station in Stuttgart (archive picture): Can compulsory vaccination be ensured through a central register or random samples?
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
Before the upcoming federal-state meeting on the fight against corona, Baden-Württemberg's data protection officer warned against excessive access by the state to health data and the introduction of a national vaccination register.
"Be careful with national registers and stay away from misappropriating data," said Stefan Brink to SPIEGEL.
From a legal point of view, Brink considers the introduction of a register under federal law in the event of the escalation of the pandemic and as a result of a general vaccination requirement to be potentially conceivable.
However, he advised against it: Already now, many people were taking to the streets and had the feeling that the state was curbing them.
"If you take hasty steps, trust in our state could decline further."
"Centrally recording the vaccination status without the consent of those affected and possibly wanting to impose fines on this basis is an enforcement fantasy that can have a negative effect on the vaccination campaign," said Brink.
In addition, the administration would have to laboriously collect the available vaccination data in a register that is not based on voluntary action, for example from the statutory health insurance associations or from the vaccination centers.
Central vaccination register useless without a central registration register?
Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) had recently told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung" that compulsory vaccination only made sense with a national vaccination register.
This is the only way to avoid counterfeiting - and people can be specifically contacted for a vaccination appointment.
The parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei (CDU), considers such a vaccination register to be "absolutely necessary".
The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, Ulrich Kelber, called the introduction of a vaccination register at least basically feasible.
He had told the Funke newspapers: "A national vaccination register is not impossible under data protection law."
The Stuttgart state data protection officer Brink pointed out, however, that a national vaccination register could only fulfill its purpose if the population registers were also centralized or at least centrally synchronized. For historical reasons, such a step should be viewed with skepticism in Germany. In addition, a centralization of the regionally very different reporting data would pose major challenges for the administrations and, according to conservative estimates, would take at least a year. He therefore recommended that compliance with a possible general vaccination requirement be ensured by means of random checks instead. "That would be feasible in compliance with data protection regulations."
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach is aiming for a general vaccination requirement to be introduced as soon as possible.
However, the SPD politician told the editorial network in Germany that he wanted to do without "new reporting structures."
At the same time, the Robert Koch Institute is working on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Health on plans for a vaccination register for scientific purposes, for example in order to have a good overview of side effects.