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The health ministers of the federal and state governments want to uniformly re-regulate the corona isolation for infected people.
Essentially, it is about reducing the isolation period for those who have been proven to be positive to five days, the Ministry of Health in Saxony-Anhalt announced after a joint video conference with the other ministers on Thursday evening.
A recommendation from the Robert Koch Institute on the subject should be published in the coming week and should form the basis of the new regulation.
Saxony-Anhalt currently chairs the Conference of Health Ministers (GMK).
Quarantine for contact persons only recommended?
It is gratifying that "all states have agreed on a uniform approach based on the scientific expertise of the RKI," Saxony-Anhalt's Health Minister Petra Grimm-Benne (SPD) is quoted as saying.
Quarantine for contact persons of infected people should only be urgently recommended, as the department heads said after the consultations.
The health ministers justified the step with increasing immunity in the population and milder disease progression with the omicron variant.
Bavaria and Saxony, among others, have already reduced the previous mandatory isolation of infected people from ten days to five days - if those affected have no symptoms for 48 hours.
In Baden-Württemberg, too, it could only last five days, as the dpa news agency learned from coalition circles.
In most countries, however, the regulation still applies that the isolation of corona infected people can only be ended after seven days through free testing.
Otherwise the isolation ends after ten days.
The quarantine and isolation rules have been discussed again and again for a long time.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach and the federal states originally wanted the mandatory isolation to expire on May 1st and rely on it being voluntary, which met with a lot of criticism.
The SPD politician subsequently withdrew from the project.
Medical associations such as the Marburger Bund recently advocated uniform rules.
Lifting the isolation after five days only makes sense if the test result is negative and you are symptom-free for 48 hours, the chairwoman of the Marburger Bund doctors’ union, Susanne Johna, warned the newspapers of the Funke media group.
Apr/AFP/dpa