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Germany: Vaccinated Persons to Receive More Rights within a Month

Germany’s federal government wants to give vaccinated individuals and former Corona patients more rights as quickly as possible. A new regulation is supposed to be confirmed by the parliament until the end of May. In the meantime, Germany just broke its own vaccination record.

Berlin, April 30th, 2021 (The Berlin Spectator) — In Berlin, the German government is preparing to give more rights to people who have been vaccinated against Corona and to former Corona patients. The Ministry of Justice is in the process of preparing a regulation for this purpose, according to German-language media. Both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat are supposed to confirm it until the end of May the very latest.

No Choice

According to Germany’s Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, giving vaccinated and cured persons their rights back is not really a choice. The constitution only allowed restrictions of basic rights as long as there were good reasons. Protecting life and people’s health in a pandemic was such a reason, she told the ‘Funke Mediengruppe’. But if cured and vaccinated individuals did not pose a danger to others anymore, the restriction of basic rights needed to be retracted. This was not about privileges, but about returning basic rights, Minister Lambrecht said.

At this stage, the Berlin ministries are discussing the draft regulation. As soon as next week, it could be approved by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, before it is the parliament’s turn. Persons who have been “vaccinated completely”, meaning individuals who have received both required doses of vaccine, or the one required shot if they got vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson’s product, are supposed to get some of their rights back 14 days after the last shot they received. Former Corona patients will have the same rights if they can produce a positive Corona test that was done between 28 days and six months before.

No Tests

According to the draft regulation, vaccinated and cured persons may enter shops, zoos and botanical gardens without getting tested for Corona first. They are supposed to be able to go to the hairdresser or a chiropody expert as well, before visiting a Corona test center first. Even more importantly, they will not need to go into quarantine anymore when they reenter Germany from high risk countries. But things will be different if they come in from a so-called ‘virus variant country’ like Brazil, South Africa or India. In this case, even vaccinated persons need to go into quarantine for 14 days.

All relevant Corona numbers for Germany, and daily Corona updates, can be found in our Corona chronology.

There is yet another advantage vaccinated and cured persons are supposed to have soon: Any Corona curfews will not apply to them anymore. As Berlin’s Governing Mayor Michael Müller pointed out the other day, the police will have to put in some extra effort. When they enforce nightly curfews, they will have to check more documents in order to establish whether the person they are checking was indeed vaccinated or cured. The mask and distance rules will still apply to everyone.

Broken Record

Germany has increased the pace of its vaccination campaign again. On Wednesday, the country broke its own record by vaccinating 1,088,952 people in one single day. Now, 25.9 percent of all Germans and residents of other nationalities have received at least one shot, 7.5 percent got their second one as well.

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