District office sends 80 fine notices to unvaccinated nurses – “I see it as harassment”

Created: 05/12/2022 17:18

By: Julia Hawener

The corona vaccination requirement for staff in clinics and nursing homes expires at the end of the year.

© Marijan Murat/dpa

The Ulm district office recently sent 80 fine notices to nursing staff because they were not vaccinated against Corona.

Criticism rains down, especially because the institution-related vaccination requirement expires at the end of the year.

Ulm – Masks only have to be worn on the bus and train, Covid tests and vaccinations are hardly relevant anymore.

Even the obligation to isolate has no longer existed in Baden-Württemberg since mid-November this year.

But for some nurses in the country, the topic of Corona is currently boiling up again.

, the district office in Ulm sent

80 fine notices to nursing staff who were not or not fully vaccinated against the virus.

Some of those affected have already lodged an objection and there has also been criticism from the Evangelische Heimstiftung, as reported by BW24.

As early as December 2021, the Bundestag and Bundesrat decided to make vaccination compulsory for the facility.

Nursing and health care workers nationwide then had to prove that they had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus or had recovered.

Anyone who could not be vaccinated for health reasons had to submit a certificate.

If no proof was presented, the health department had to be informed by the respective facility.

Since then, the personnel concerned have been threatened, among other things, with a ban on entry or employment or a fine of up to 2,500 euros.

At least three nurses from the home foundation are said to have received notification of the latter, as reported by

.

They should pay almost 300 euros each.

The Ulm District Office sent 80 fine notices to unvaccinated nurses

With 156 facilities in the southwest, the Evangelische Heimstiftung is the largest care company in the southwest.

The foundation cannot understand why three of its employees should now pay money: "I see it as harassment, as punishment," says the chairwoman of the group employee representative body, Ilka Steck, to

.

She justifies this with the fact that the institution-related vaccination obligation expires at the end of the year.

In addition, those employees would have been allowed to continue working without being vaccinated.

In two of these three cases, an appeal has now been filed against the fine notices.

But not only employees of the foundation were affected by the fines.

According to information from the

, there were a total of 80 fines.

And not all 1,606 cases in which employees were reported to the health department because of missing or insufficient proof of vaccination were punished, as a spokeswoman for the Ulm district office announced.

According to the spokeswoman, it would have been decided on a case-by-case basis whether there was a fine or not.

For example, when people “behaved particularly vehemently and persistently in response to requests to submit evidence and the hearing process”.

In addition, the Ulm District Office told the

that the penal options were not exhausted in a single case.

Entry bans were not issued and the fines would be between 200 and 250 euros - 2,500 euros would be theoretically possible.

Nevertheless, 38 of the 80 employees filed objections;

18 of these were passed on to the public prosecutor's office, which has so far considered all decisions to be correct.

Baden-Württemberg is relaxing verification checks for facility-related compulsory vaccination

It is not only in the Alb-Donau district in Baden-Württemberg that the fine notices caused a stir due to the lack of corona proof.

The city of Jena in Thuringia, for example, now wants to waive the fine due to ongoing criticism and is discontinuing the proceedings.

So far one has not gone so far in the southwest.

However, the obligation to vaccinate was only recently shaken, as reported by Spiegel.

Actually, employees had to present a third vaccination or two vaccinations and proof of recovery by the beginning of October at the latest.

According to the State Ministry of Health, this obligation should no longer apply to anyone who was hired before this date.