Health officials in Germany are divided over whether the country is ready to ease the restrictive measures it has taken to curb the covid-19 pandemic, at a time when neighboring countries have already begun to do so.
Today, Germany announced a record number of new cases, 236,120, due to the most contagious variant of the coronavirus Omicron, but some experts believe that the time has come to draw up a “freedom plan” on how to gradually lift the restrictions.
“The drafting of this Freedom Plan is now the most important task of politicians,” Andreas Gassen, head of the Association of Family Physicians (KBV), told the Rheinische Post today.
Gassen estimated that Germany would have to accept that it would live with covid-19, as it does with the flu, which is constantly infecting new strains and causing tens of thousands of deaths each year.
“We have to accept this for the coronavirus and at the same time continue to offer vaccines to vulnerable groups,” he added.
Other European countries, such as Finland, Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria, have begun lifting restrictions in recent days in a bid to return to normalcy.
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Solz declined to reveal details of plans to ease restrictions ahead of the current wave of the epidemic, which is expected in mid-February.
However, some German states, such as Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, announced the easing of measures earlier this week, a move criticized by some German health officials as premature.
“It would be fatal if we were in a situation where the number of infections is starting to rise again due to premature relaxation,” Gernot Marx, head of the union of intensivists, told the Funke news group.
Marx stated that concrete relaxation measures should be taken only when there is a steady decrease in the number of cases over several days.
Solz is scheduled to discuss the pandemic situation in the country with the state prime ministers on February 16.
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