He himself would continue to put on a mask on the train, Lauterbach wrote in the short message service Twitter – and recommended this to other travelers as well. Wearing a mask protects other people and reduces the risk of long-Covid illness from renewed corona infection, he wrote.
There was also a debate on Wednesday about how the mask requirement for visitors to clinics and nursing homes should continue – with different assessments from experts.
The chairwoman of the AOK federal association, Carola Reimann, called for the mask requirement to be extended until early summer. “We also have to protect the vulnerable groups in Germany in the long term,” Reimann told the newspapers of the Funke media group on Wednesday. Those in need of care and the sick require special protection, even beyond April 7th, when the protective measures laid down in the current Infection Protection Act lose their validity.
The chairwoman of the Marburger Bund doctors’ union, Susanne Johna, on the other hand, declared an early end to the mask requirement in the healthcare system to be possible. The hospitals should define their risk areas themselves and decide where protective masks have to be worn, Johna told the “Handelsblatt”. “In other areas, there will no longer be a consistent mask requirement.”
The health expert of the FDP parliamentary group, Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus, made a similar statement. The FDP politician demanded that the “general mask requirement for patients and visitors in medical practices, care facilities and hospitals” must be lifted. “Rather, all medical groups should be given back their decision-making authority and decide individually whether to implement a mask requirement for their area to protect vulnerable groups.”
The German Society for Pneumology supports the elimination of the mask requirement in public transport. Although there will be more corona infections, he does not expect this to become a medical problem, said the company’s president, Torsten Bauer, on Wednesday on RBB Inforadio.
Particularly vulnerable groups such as chemotherapy patients should continue to wear a mask on public transport. “This is another respiratory disease, we will still see corona infections in ten years,” said Bauer. “However, the pandemic situation is over. This means that almost everyone on this earth should now have antibodies against this virus.”
