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Convinced of the obligation to vaccinate: Chancellor Olaf Scholz
PHOTO: EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP
Chancellor Olaf Scholz is confident of getting a majority in the Bundestag for compulsory corona vaccination.
He also refers to surveys that show that around two-thirds of Germans would support compulsory vaccination.
"This is a major social repositioning," he told the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" - and was confident that the MPs would follow this assessment.
After all, some time ago he himself ruled out compulsory vaccination, said Scholz.
But: »If the situation changes, for example because the virus mutates, we have to adapt our measures.
We must not get into a situation in which we do not do something that is necessary because we rejected it months earlier on the basis of different facts.«
Scholz says he had long hoped that a vaccination rate would be achieved that would be sufficient to protect the entire population even without an obligation.
This requires a rate of 90 percent for first vaccinations.
Germany is currently at 75 percent.
"We all feel this difference," says Scholz: "Once again we had to set far-reaching contact restrictions, again we had to ensure that the hospitals had sufficient capacity to be able to treat infected patients."
He is now convinced: "Without compulsory vaccination, we will not be able to bring the rate to the level that is necessary so that we can put the pandemic behind us." be able to count in the spring: »The next autumn will definitely come.
It is therefore important to increase the vaccination rate.«
On Monday, the federal and state governments will meet for a video conference to talk about the corona crisis. Scholz spoke out against relaxing the current rules. Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder brought this up. The burden on the clinics is the decisive benchmark, he told the "Augsburger Allgemeine". The measures introduced against the delta wave could not be transferred 1:1 to another mutation. In culture, sports and youth work, "more participation" should be possible again.
Scholz, on the other hand, insisted that no course correction was necessary.
"In any case, it is certainly not appropriate to relax the rules across the board in the middle of the omicron wave." Because of the rapid spread of the easily transmissible omicron variant, the number of infections in Germany is higher than ever.
However, so far this has not been reflected in a renewed increase in the load on the intensive care units in hospitals.
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