Majority for mask requirement on public transport

Created: 2022-08-13Updated: 2022-08-13, 2:17 p.m

The inside view of an FFP2 mask.

© Daniel Karmann/dpa

Should Germany go into the Corona autumn with a new mask requirement?

The mood is not clear.

What is striking, however, is that the attitude to the mask differs depending on party preference.

Berlin – A clear majority of people in Germany are in favor of making masks compulsory on public transport for the coming autumn and winter.

63 percent are in favor of such an obligation in local public transport, according to a survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency.

58 percent support this in long-distance rail and air travel.

46 percent still support a mask requirement when shopping, but only 29 percent do so for schools.

In principle, 24 percent of those surveyed voted against a mask requirement.

There are differences depending on political preference.

The largest majorities for a mask requirement in the individual areas are among those who voted for the Greens in the last federal election.

There are also above-average numbers of mask supporters among SPD voters, to a somewhat lesser extent among those of the CDU/CSU and partly also of the left.

The proportion of supporters of the mask requirement at the FDP is below average.

It is by far the lowest among supporters of the AfD.

A narrow majority of 51 percent of them declared that they were generally against a mask requirement.

A little more than a third advocates such a duty, for example in local public transport.

New plans for the fall

According to the latest proposals by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP), people in Germany could again be faced with a nationwide mask requirement indoors from October.

It should be omitted for those who have been vaccinated no more than three months previously, have recently recovered or have tested negative for Corona.

Lauterbach made it clear on Friday that the federal states will not be forced to introduce such an obligation.

However, he assumed that they would do this voluntarily if the number of infections increased again.

In the coming week, the federal government wants to discuss the controversial proposals again with the federal states.

On August 24th, the draft for a protection concept for autumn and winter should pass the cabinet and then be passed promptly by the Bundestag and Bundesrat.

Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek called for more clarity from the federal government.

"The draft law presented by the traffic light is currently not practicable and is formulated very vaguely," he criticized on Saturday.

For example, it is unclear what - as formulated in the draft law - is "a particularly strong increase" in the seven-day incidence or "stagnation at a very high level".

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Lauterbach said on Friday that the Corona summer wave was slowly starting to recede.

There is a “robust decline in the number of cases”.

On Saturday morning, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence as 342.2 - after 345.9 the day before.

The health authorities recently reported 45,859 new infections (previous week: 49,609) and 137 deaths (previous week: 141) to the RKI within one day.

However, this information only provides a very incomplete picture of the infection process.

Experts assume, for example, that there is a high number of unreported cases of new infections.

dpa