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Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP): "There should never have been anything like curfews"
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Carsten Koall / dpa
Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) has called for targeted preparations in schools in view of the expected increase in the number of corona infections in autumn.
"There can no longer be school closures across the board," Stark-Watzinger told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
»Science assumes that the winter can be managed given the variants that are now known.
I assume the best, but you also have to prepare for the most difficult.«
Now is the time to prepare the schools for the winter, for example with CO2 traffic lights that measure the air quality in rooms and good communication channels with parents, said the minister.
"Preparation also includes digital stress tests, which are intended to show whether it is possible to at least offer digital lessons to children in quarantine, for example."
The FDP politician spoke out in favor of a debate on the infection protection law proposed by the traffic light government.
"I am a member of parliament myself and in recent years I have sometimes wished for a livelier parliament," Stark-Watzinger told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
»There should never have been anything like curfews.
In this respect, I think a broad debate is good.«
"We are striving for a proportionate fight against the pandemic in every respect," said the Minister of Education.
"That's why it's so important to me that there is no general obligation to wear masks in schools.
We will debate in parliament what further exceptions will look like.« However, the Corona policy will not become »a rift« for the traffic light government.
Hamburg's school senator describes the air filter system support program as a flop
Meanwhile, Hamburg's school senator Ties Rabe (SPD) criticized the federal funding program for air filter systems, which is intended to reduce corona infections in classrooms.
"From our point of view, the federal funding program is a flop," Rabe told the "Rheinische Post".
“Air filters are only officially promoted by the federal government in rooms that cannot be ventilated, i.e. either have no windows at all or only windows that cannot be opened,” said Rabe.
“There are usually no classrooms like this in any normal school.” As part of the “Mobile Air Purifiers 2021” funding program, the federal government provided 200 million euros for the purchase of mobile air purification devices in facilities for children under the age of twelve.
So far, the funds have not been fully drawn down.
Clear majority for mask requirement in long-distance and local transport
A mask requirement in long-distance, air and local public transport is still met with great approval from the population.
In a survey by the YouGov institute on behalf of the German Press Agency, 63 percent of those questioned said they supported such a duty in local public transport.
For long-distance rail travel and air travel, it was 58 percent.
Only 24 percent said they were fundamentally against a mask requirement.
For other publicly accessible spaces such as shops, 46 percent of those surveyed supported a mask requirement, for schools only 29 percent.
The approval was above average among supporters of the Greens, significantly lower among those of the FDP, and lowest among people who voted AfD in the last federal election.
A narrow majority of 51 percent of them declared that they were generally against a mask requirement.
The amendment to the Infection Protection Act developed by Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) provides that the federal states can decide for themselves from October whether they want to reintroduce a mask requirement indoors if the number of infections increases.
The law still has to be approved by the cabinet and then passed by the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
hej/dpa/AFP