Five
Unanswered Questions
Germany Faces Fresh Corona Challenges As Fall
Approaches
The number of coronavirus infections is increasing in
Germany, and worries are growing that it will spike even higher once people
move their lives back indoors in the coming months. With levels different in
each state, there is disagreement over a common national response.
By Matthias
Bartsch, Sven Becker, Markus Feldenkirchen, Silke Fokken, Florian Gathmann,
Veronika Hackenbroch, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Veit Medick, Martin U. Müller, Lydia
Rosenfelder, Cornelia Schmergal, Ansgar Siemens und Gerald Traufetter
26.08.2020,
17.23 Uhr
There have
always been people who could celebrate carnival for several months and then
chat about it for the rest of the year to tide them over until the Mardi Gras
festivities begin again. They live in the Rhineland and in southern Germany,
where carnival traditions are strong. There’s less enthusiasm for the
celebrations in northern Germany, where the tradition isn’t widespread.
But the
coronavirus this year has ensured that issues like carnival celebrations are
being discussed all across the country. The pandemic got its first major
foothold in Germany in February, courtesy of a local carnival party in the
Heinsberg district in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Now, there’s already
talk of the upcoming carnival season because it is scheduled to begin on Nov.
11, and, with the cooler autumn weather, many of its parties are held indoors.
People also
typically drink copious amounts of beer at the parties. And after a few drinks,
people often begin to ignore social distancing. German Health Minister Jens
Spahn even went to the Münsterland area in the state to discuss the problem
with restaurant and bar owners. Ultimately, he recommended that this year’s
upcoming carnival, which culminates with millions of attendees at mass parades
on Shrove Monday, be cancelled. Given the popularity of carnival in Germany,
the recommendation wasn't particularly well-received. It would be the second
cancellation of a major event adored by millions of Germans, following Munich’s
internationally beloved Oktoberfest, which will not take place this year.
The debate
over the correct policies for containing the coronavirus is heating up again in
Germany. After the federal and state governments demonstrated poor preparedness
for the risks that came with this summer’s vacation season, they will have to
do a better job in the fall. Germany’s plan to provide coronavirus testing for
people returning from summer vacations in other countries was introduced too
late and ultimately ended in chaos, particularly in Bavaria. Once the temperatures
start to drop as fall begins, celebrations held inside are likely to pose a
considerable risk.
Worrisome
Dynamics
The
situation is getting increasingly tense right now. Last Thursday saw the
highest number of daily coronavirus infections seen since the end of April, a
total repeated on Saturday. "The number of cases is still such that the
health system can cope with it," said Spahn. "What is worrying are
the dynamics."
Some state
governors – Malu Dreyer (of the center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPD)
from Rhineland-Palatinate and Tobias Hans (of the center-right Christian
Democratic Union, or CDU) from Saarland, for example – called for a meeting
with Chancellor Angela Merkel that is now set to be held on Thursday.
But that
kind of meeting only really makes sense if it
can deliver results and not just squabbling. It’s also an open question
whether it can succeed given that the rates of infection vary so much between
the different states. In the eastern state of Thuringia, which has so far
escaped relatively unscathed, politicians are calling for a further loosening
of coronavirus measures – a step that Hans can’t imagine taking in Saarland,
where the rate of infection is relatively high. "We must continue to be
vigilant and observe basic rules of social distancing and hygiene in our daily
lives," concurs Dreyer in neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate.
There are
five corona-related issues that are heading up the list of concerns for
politicians in Germany as summer holidays come to an end and school begins.
Here’s an
overview:
Events
It's not
only carnival that Health Minister Spahn has in his sights, but also all larger
events and family celebrations where corona rules are quickly forgotten after a
few beers. In recent days, he has been warning that celebrations with 150
guests could become spreader events. In his youth, Spahn waited enough tables
at weddings to know what he’s talking about.
He’s not
interested in a blanket policy. Other events are different. His ministry
believes that different numbers of people could be conceivable at Germany’s
famous annual Christmas markets than at carnival parties and that the venue and
the character of the event are the decisive factors. Spahn says he wants to
share his ideas with state leaders.
So far, the
maximum number of participants allowed at events is an issue that has been
decided by the individual states. Bavaria only permits a maximum of 100 guests
at private celebrations in indoor spaces, whereas Brandenburg allows up to
1,000. Dreyer has called for the different states to get as close as possible
in harmonizing their policies.
In a
conference call of the Health Committee in the federal parliament last week,
Spahn pleaded for the cancellation of the entire carnival season this year.
"I simply cannot imagine carnival this winter, in the middle of the
pandemic," he said, according to other participants in attendance.
Spahn hails
from North Rhine-Westphalia, where many of the main carnival celebrations take
place in cities like Cologne and Düsseldorf, and his comments didn’t go over
well with the state chapter of his party. State Health Minister Karl-Josef
Laumann, likewise of the CDU, believes Spahn is premature with his appeal. He first
wants to wait and see what impact people returning from vacation and the start
of the school year has on the infection rate.
Laumann
also doesn’t think much of stricter guidelines for family celebrations. He says
he doesn’t believe the state should be extending its authority into people’s
living rooms. "I don’t see the need,” he says.
There has
also been resistance in other states. "We shouldn’t operate on a basis of
fear again,” says Bodo Ramelow, the state governor of Thuringia with the Left
Party. "That doesn’t really help. It’s even dangerous in my opinion. I
think it’s totally wrong for carnival to be cancelled everywhere. I want to
find ways to make carnival possible for Thuringia. We will have to find a
strategy together with carnival organizers to allow us to celebrate and not
cancel everything from the get-go out of fear of the apocalypse.”
Tests
The recent
testing disaster in Bavaria is even bigger than previously thought. State
Governor Markus Söder of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the conservative
sister party of Merkel’s CDU, boldly announced mass testing for people
returning to the state from vacations at autobahn and airport sites. But not
all those who have tested positive have been informed.
DER SPIEGEL
has also uncovered an additional problem at the Munich Airport. Some airlines have been trying to figure out
for several days what to do with so-called "exit cards” that passengers
from risk areas have to fill out on the plane and are intended for the health
authorities. They can be used to determine what seat a passenger was sitting
in, whether they have obeyed the quarantine requirement and whether they were
tested for the coronavirus.
One major
airline confirmed that it has tried several times to find out from the
responsible State Office for Health and Food Safety what exactly should be done
with exit cards after landing in Munich. In vain.
"I simply cannot imagine carnival this winter, in
the middle of the pandemic."
German Health Minister Jens Spahn
The airline
says calls and e-mails have gone unanswered. According to an industry source,
the problem still hadn’t been clarified by the middle of last week. The
authority didn’t respond to a request for comment from DER SPIEGEL and nor did
the Bavarian State Ministry of Health and Care. A spokesman for the Munich
Airport says it is unaware of the facts relating to the situation and suggested
contacting the two government agencies. At this point, it remains unclear just
who is taking care of important passenger data.
In Munich,
thousands of exit cards from Lufthansa or Turkish Airlines are likely to have
been left lying around. And without the cards, it’s not possible to determine
if people illegally skipped getting tested for the coronavirus after landing.
Another
problem is the different rules for the tests. Bärbel Bas, a health policy
expert and the deputy chair of the Social Democrats’ party group in parliament,
says, "The way testing is being done in Germany has become very confusing.
Different rules seem to apply in each state and each health department. It’s
difficult to identify a strategy any longer. Can a child with the sniffles go
to daycare? Does the child have to stay home or does it have to present the
results of a test?"
Nurses
can’t get tested until the health department orders the test, but those
returning from a trip can easily get tested at the airport. She says that testing
capacities are limited and that the priority should be placed on schools and
medical staff. "The federal government, the states and the chancellor need
to sit down together and decide on a uniform testing strategy," Bas says.
Masks
On Friday
evening last week at 6:33 p.m., the Bavarian State Office of Health sent a
"product warning" to several authorities and ministries in the state,
including health and judicial agencies. It was about the "precautionary
barring" of protective masks that the state had procured for medical
practices and the Technical Relief Agency (THW), among others.
In the
e-mail, an employee at the state’s central warehouse for pandemic supplies
informed people that the use of masks from six Chinese manufacturers would be
blocked until further notice "due to missing certificates.” In question
were Chinese KN95 masks, which are roughly equivalent to the higher-quality
FFP2 respirator masks. Products from another Asian manufacturer was also
investigated for the State Office of Health. The investigation found that,
"The test samples didn’t meet the requirements in every respect." The
authorities stopped further distribution and warned against using the masks
that had already been distributed.
For now,
the masks will not be destroyed. They will instead be kept as "evidence”
in "legal proceedings” that have been filed.
The
supplier of the masks is a company called F&E Protective in the city of
Passau. The company’s head, Michael Bogner, stepped in to help the state with
assistance from German Transportation Minister Andreas Scheuer of the CSU. The
two knew each other from Scheuer’s constituency in the state. But in its
reporting, DER SPIEGEL brought to light the fact that 11 million masks intended
for the federal government turned out to be "junk,” as Bogner admitted in
April. He says this led to delayed deliveries.
Now, he has
been forced to admit that there have also been problems with the goods that
were intended for the Bavarian state government. After a partial delivery, it
was determined that the masks "couldn’t be closed 100 percent at the
chin.” "Of course” the company would take back the delivery, he said.
A spokesman
for the Bavarian Health Ministry explained events as such: The state ordered a
total of 3 million respirator masks from F&E Protective, and they were
delivered in May. The "required certificate” had not been included in the
final partial shipment of 14,000 masks, the ministry said. This prompted the
State Health Office to "arrange for the masks to be tested by a testing
laboratory.” The tests found that the masks didn’t meet the requirements. The
ministry left open the question of whether the millions of masks that had
previously been delivered by the Passau company might have had any defects.
Of course,
that won’t increase trust in masks, which have become an important symbol in
German policies aimed at containing the virus. Or in crisis management by
Söder, who is emerging as a leading contender to run as Merkel’s successor as
the conservatives’ chancellor candidate.
Ventilation
A week ago
Tuesday, the Chancellery announced that ventilation will play a major role in
the coming weeks. The Labor Ministry, which is responsible for occupational
health and safety, has been ordered to review the opportunities presented by
technologies for air ventilation and purification.
At the end
of July, the ministry organized a workshop with experts. But participants
report that the findings of the meeting had been sobering. Modern air
filtration systems could contribute to reducing the aerosol problem, they
found, but they would not provide a complete solution.
The Labor
Ministry is now drafting recommendations for the Chancellery and other
ministries. In them, they recommend increasing the frequency of maintenance on
ventilation systems before the cold season begins this autumn. A federal and
state program is also being discussed for the installation of modern filter
systems that effectively reduce aerosols.
Ventilation
is also a problem for schools. "The problem of aerosols being spread in
overcrowded, poorly ventilated rooms remains completely unsolved,” says
Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the German Teachers' Association.
Teachers
have been instructed to air out their rooms regularly to allow fresh air into
the room and reduce exposure to aerosols. But how? "In many schools, for
safety reasons alone, windows on the second and third floors can only be opened
partially. No one knows what’s going to happen once the cold season begins if
the windows can’t be left open for hours at a time. That's when the real action
starts."
Quarantine
Last week,
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced he would reduce quarantine times in
the Netherlands from 14 to 10 days. That decision could also have ramifications
for the German debate on the issue.
Currently,
Germany has a 14-day quarantine rule. Anyone returning from a COVID-19 risk
area and cannot produce certification of a negative test result or had close
contact to an infected person has to go into "self-isolation” at home
under Germany’s Infection Control Law.
But most
COVID-19 victims are no longer contagious one week after the onset of symptoms.
The incubation period (the time between getting infected and the start of
symptoms) can sometimes last two weeks, but it is usually much shorter, only a
few days. The question now is whether 14 days is the right period for
quarantine.
Strictly
speaking, the local health authorities determine the duration on their own. But
the two-week quarantine has become the national standard since the Robert Koch
Institute (RKI), the country’s disease control center, established it in a
recommendation it issued on Jan. 22.
However,
experts like prominent Berlin virologist Christian Drosten and SPD health
policy expert Karl Lauterbach have been calling on RKI to reduce its
recommended period of quarantine times from 14 to seven days. According to the
latest findings, the longer quarantine period no longer makes sense. It would
both relieve the health authorities and lead to increased acceptance of the
quarantine policy by the populace.
Like
Lauterbach, Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher is a Social Democrat and also
studied to become a doctor. But Tschentscher strongly disagrees with him on the
issue of self-isolation. "I don’t believe in relaxing the quarantine
requirement,” he says. "They are medically reasoned, so that we’re on the
safe side."
But what is
the safe side of the coronavirus? It’s the old problem.
RKI is
currently on Tschentscher’s side. Officials there note that some studies have
also found longer incubations periods, with five to 10 percent of infections
occurring 14 days after the person spreading the contagion contracted it.
"As such, there is still a residual risk after a quarantine period of 14
days, but the residual risk in the event of a reduction would be considerable,”
RKI argues. The experts thus see "no strong argument” for deviating from the
14-day period, which is also what the World Health Organization recommends.
Chancellor
Merkel and the state governors will have plenty to discuss this week. Crisis
policies seemed to lack a focal point in recent weeks, with politicians on
their summer recess and a lack of such meetings. They used to hold regularly
scheduled meetings, but they were suspended
following a sharp drop in infections. There’s a strong case for
recommencing those meetings now in light of the lack of consensus on just about
every question.
"I
advocate a stronger role for the federal government," says Lauterbach. He
says the states regained their decision-making authority during the more
pleasant phase of the easing of the lockdown. "Now that the second wave is
coming, the governors are realizing that their autonomy is also borrowed
time."
Thuringia
Governor Ramelow views things differently. He advocates a minimal federal role.
"If there is one thing that needs to be regulated uniformly nationwide, it
is the strengthening of the public health service,” he says. If we can manage
joint health policies, then we would be pleased to decide on them together. But
just because somebody gets nervous, doesn’t mean we all have to go into alarm
mode."
Governor
Dreyer, for her part, can imagine a uniform upper limit on the number of
participants at events, but not a blanket ban on the carnival festivities this
winter and spring. She also favors individual state policies on this issue.
There does,
however, seem to be at least one minimal consensus. "A lockdown like in
March is out of the
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