Hamburg’s mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) has criticized the lifting of the corona isolation and mask requirement by individual federal states. A nationwide approach is better, said the President of the Federal Council. Most countries did not yet consider it necessary to lift the mask requirement in local public transport. “I’m also one of them because there are still many corona infections and numerous other infectious diseases. Lifting the mask requirement would reinforce this effect.”
As has already happened in Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, the mask requirement in local transport is to be abolished in Schleswig-Holstein at the turn of the year. For HVV customers, this means that they must or can put on and take off their masks during a cross-border journey. Not a good solution for Tschentscher: “You don’t want that as a citizen,” he said.
Caution is still required, especially in local public transport in large cities and metropolitan areas such as Hamburg. “Very crowded buses and trains are a classic risk factor for the transmission of infections via the respiratory tract.”
The infection load is currently high because the corona restrictions have not only pushed back corona viruses, but also many other infectious agents. With public life largely returning to normal, there is now a higher number of diseases, for example from RS viruses in children,” said the former laboratory doctor.
He therefore recommends maintaining the obligation to insulate and wear a mask in local public transport until spring – “simply to dampen the sharp increase in infectious diseases, including corona, in this first winter after the severe pandemic and thereby relieve the health care system.”
In an interview with WELT AM SONNTAG, the director of UKE intensive care, Stefan Kluge, doubted whether the isolation requirement in Hamburg would be adhered to: “Corona has changed from a very dangerous viral disease that is unknown to us to one that does not exist for the majority of the population more immediate danger – apart from Long Covid, which we have much more to explore. In this respect, the question arises as to whether we even have to send employees who have tested positive asymptomatically to isolation for five to ten days.” For high-risk areas such as the intensive care unit or areas that treat immunocompromised patients, this “of course still applies.”
