Vaccination before the end?

Lauterbach contradicts – and warns of variant “as deadly as Delta”

Created: 01/18/2022 15:17

By: Florian Naumann

Does Omikron put an end to compulsory vaccination?

Karl Lauterbach wants to prevent that - he refers to a still fictitious but drastic scenario.

Berlin – The long-awaited compulsory corona vaccination is starting to wobble again – partly because of the milder courses in the omicron wave.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach* (SPD) still wants to stick to the instrument.

He points to possible further twists and turns in the pandemic.

Lauterbach defends compulsory corona vaccination: "Nobody can rule out something like that"

The vaccination rate is too low and the virus could change again, remaining highly contagious like Omicron but deadly again like Delta, the minister said on Deutschlandfunk on Tuesday morning.

"No one can rule that out.

Therefore, values ​​of 80 percent are clearly too low.”

Lauterbach explained on Twitter, referring to a current study from Switzerland: “Hardly any people who have been boosted and very few who have been vaccinated die from Covid.

It's the unvaccinated that we need to protect." "I'd rather we protect them through mandatory vaccination than through restrictions on everyone again in the fall," he added.

Party comrade Malu Dreyer made a similar statement in the ARD talk “Hart aber fair” – she warned of a “total uprising” if there were renewed restrictions in the fall.

Corona vaccination obligation?

Lauterbach wants to do without vaccination registers

At the same time, Lauterbach pleaded on Deutschlandfunk for a general obligation to vaccinate without a vaccination register yet to be created.

"We can also monitor compulsory vaccination without a vaccination register," said the SPD politician on Tuesday on Deutschlandfunk.

He warns against relying on a register.

"The establishment of a vaccination register takes a long time and is also not uncontroversial in terms of data protection law."

The minister also defended the plan to give priority to the more precise PCR tests for free testing for an early end of quarantine for health and nursing staff.

"We won't have enough PCR tests because capacity is limited," he said.

For other groups, such as in schools, an antigen test is sufficient.

This test works very well for free testing.

"It doesn't work that well at the beginning of an infection," says Lauterbach, "but it works very well when you want to go back." (

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