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Bavaria’s state premier wants to limit contacts for unvaccinated

With Covid-19 infection rates rising dramatically in Germany, Bavaria's Minister-President Markus Söder believes it has become necessary to restrict contacts for unvaccinated people to avoid losing control of the situation completely.

Published: 14 November 2021 18:40 CET
Bavaria's Minister-President Markus Söder wearing a face mask.
Bavaria's Minister-President Markus Söder wants Covid-19 rules to be tightened across Germany. Christof STACHE / AFP

“We need to be able to limit contacts for unvaccinated people,” he told a cabinet budget meeting in Munich on Sunday, German media reported.

He said this should be an additional tool to implement if the country wants to avoid being overwhelmed by the virus.

But it shouldn’t be a lockdown for the unvaccinated like in Austria, but 2G – i.e. proof of Covid-19 vaccination or recovery “with the same results”.

READ ALSO: Austria confirms lockdown for the unvaccinated to begin on Monday

He said the situation was at risk of “slipping out of our grasp” across the whole country with the danger of hospitals collapsing and healthcare professionals having to decide which patients to care for.

This chart from Our World in Data shows the rising case-rate trend across Germany and most countries covered by The Local.

There are currently 3,000 patients with Covid-19 in intensive care, still a way off the peak of 5,762 seen at the start of January. 

“Shirking the situation doesn’t help,” the CSU minister said, calling for the federal and state governments to act together in solidarity.

He also called on the future coalition negotiating partners (SPD, Greens and FDP) to take doctors’ concerns seriously and significantly toughen up the draft infection protection law, which he said was “insufficient in every respect”.

“With the laws that are currently planned, Germany is in no way winter-proof. We are stumbling into an ice-cold winter with shorts and summer tyres, so to speak. It will not work,” he warned.

The Bavarian state government want 2G or even 2G+ (vaccination, recovery or negative rapid test) rules to apply across the whole country uniformly.

They also want to see FFP2 masks being made compulsory on trains Germany-wide as well as a cap on numbers at events, echoing statements made by German Green party head Robert Habeck and SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach.

In Bavaria itself, restrictions are set to tighten from Tuesday, with the introduction of 2G rules for guests in restaurants, hotels and at events, while masks would still have to be worn, too.

His statements came as Germany’s public health body, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), reported a record seven-day incidence rate for the seventh consecutive time.

On Sunday, the value stood at 289 per 100,000 people, the highest level seen during the pandemic so far.

READ ALSO: Could Germany really see a lockdown this winter?
READ ALSO: Why Germany’s Covid booster jab campaign has failed to take off
READ ALSO: Skip big parties, urges German health agency amid Covid surge

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COVID-19 RULES

End of the pandemic? What the expiry of Sweden’s Covid laws really means

With the expiry of Sweden's two temporary Covid-19 laws, the downgrading of the virus's threat classification, and the end of the last travel restrictions, April, officially at least, marks the end of the pandemic. We explain what it means.

Published: 1 April 2022 13:07 CEST
End of the pandemic? What the expiry of Sweden's Covid laws really means

What are the two laws which expire on April 1st? 

Sweden’s parliament voted last week to let the two temporary laws put in place to battle the Covid-19 pandemic expire on April 1st.

The first law is the so-called Covid-19 law, or “the law on special restrictions to limit the spread of the Covid-19 illness”, which was used during the pandemic to temporarily empower the authorities to limit the number of visitors to shops, gyms, and sports facilities. It also gave the government power to limit the number of people who could gather in public places like parks and beaches. 

The second law was the “law on temporary restrictions at serving places”. This gave the authorities, among other things, the power to limit opening times, and force bars and restaurants to only serve seated customers.  

What impact will their expiry have? 

The immediate impact on life in Sweden will be close to zero, as the restrictions imposed on the back of these two laws were lifted months ago. But it does means that if the government does end up wanting to bring back these infection control measures, it will have to pass new versions of the laws before doing so. 

How is the classification of Covid-19 changing? 

The government decided at the start of February that it would stop classifying Covid-19 both as a “critical threat to society” and “a disease that’s dangerous to the public” on April 1st.

These classifications empowered the government under the infectious diseases law that existed in Sweden before the pandemic to impose health checks on inbound passengers, place people in quarantine, and ban people from entering certain areas, among other measures. 

What impact will this change have? 

Now Covid-19 is no longer classified as “a disease that’s dangerous to the public”, or an allmänfarlig sjukdom, people who suspect they have caught the virus, are no longer expected to visit a doctor or get tested, and they cannot be ordered to get tested by a court on the recommendation of an infectious diseases doctor. People with the virus can also no longer be required to aid with contact tracing or to go into quarantine. 

Now Covid-19 is no longer classified as “a critical threat to society”, or samhällsfarlig, the government can no longer order health checks at border posts, quarantine, or ban people from certain areas. 

The end of Sweden’s last remaining Covid-19 travel restrictions

Sweden’s last remaining travel restriction, the entry ban for non-EU arrivals, expired on March 31st.  This means that from April 1st, Sweden’s travel rules return to how they were before the Covid-19 pandemic began. 

No one will be required to show a vaccination or test certificate to enter the country, and no one will be barred from entering the country because their home country or departure country is not deemed to have a sufficiently good vaccination program or infection control measures. 

Does that mean the pandemic is over? 

Not as such. Infection rates are actually rising across Europe on the back of yet another version of the omicron variant. 

“There is still a pandemic going on and we all need to make sure that we live with it in a balanced way,” the Public Health Agency’s director-general, Karin Tegmark Wisell, told SVT. 

Her colleague Sara Byfors told TT that this included following the “fundamental recommendation to stay home if you are sick, so you don’t spread Covid-19 or any other diseases”. 

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