Lucha calls for power: "FDP no standard for Corona"

Created: 06/21/2022Updated: 06/21/2022 11:28 am

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), recorded during an interview with the dpa.

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

The Corona situation may also be manageable in autumn, says the Minister of Health in Stuttgart.

If politicians can react in time.

But the traffic light must quickly lay the foundations for this - even against the will of the liberals.

Stuttgart - Baden-Württemberg is pushing for quick precautions because of the threatening corona wave in autumn and is demanding a word of power from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the dispute with the FDP.

"It must be very clear that we will no longer let the FDP dance around on our noses," said Stuttgart Health Minister Manne Lucha (Greens) of the German Press Agency.

"A federal political word of power must now be spoken." The traffic light must present an amendment to the Infection Protection Act before the summer break and thus enable any necessary measures such as bans on contact.

It now depends on the responsible government parties in Berlin.

"SPD and Greens simply have to assert themselves against the FDP on this point." Lucha is certain: "The FDP is not our benchmark when it comes to fighting the pandemic,

Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD), however, relies on a quick agreement in the traffic light coalition.

With a view to the report from a council of experts on the previous arrangements expected at the end of June, he said on Tuesday in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”: “I think we will get a good commission report.

We will then come to an agreement very quickly.

The drama that everyone is waiting for will not happen.” Lauterbach went on to say: “And so we will be much better prepared for the winter than one or the other now suspects.” However, the first conflicts are already foreseeable.

Most recently, FDP Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann expressed skepticism about the reintroduction of a mask requirement if the corona infections continue to rise sharply.

The Baden-Württemberg Green politician Lucha now wants to get down to business quickly.

"We want the legal basis for a ban on contact, the obligation to wear masks indoors and for 2G and 3G measures that we can enact if the risk of infection is so great that the healthcare system is threatened to be overloaded again." That's better than in the event of having to close everything again after a major outbreak.

“We want to be able to react in good time to prevent economic, social, cultural and, above all, school life from coming to a complete standstill again.

So these are purely preventive measures.”

Together with the Union-led states of Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, he wants to bring about a decision at the conference of health ministers in Magdeburg from Thursday that will call on the federal government to quickly create legal, financial and organizational planning security for the fall.

In addition to the protective measures, they are calling for the test regulation to be "appropriately" extended beyond the end of June.

Lucha explained: “The random testing of people without symptoms is not correct at the moment.” The draft decision of the federal states therefore states: “There is still a need for free and unbureaucratic testing options, in particular to protect the environment of facilities for vulnerable people and secure groups.”

Despite rising incidences, Lucha does not yet see a summer wave - unlike Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD).

“We have an increased incidence of infection due to the changed virus variants and because people are more mobile again and have more contacts.” However, the health system is not yet under any greater strain than in the past few weeks.

"I wouldn't use the word wave just yet," said the state minister.

When individual doctors warned of a health emergency in the fall, that was an exaggeration.

"Our experts, with whom we are in constant contact, say: If we do the right thing, we can control the situation." It is true that the health and care system, especially the hospitals, are burdened.

"But I am currently not aware of a warning of a general health emergency from the organized medical profession." dpa