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Officially, many health authorities say they will quarantine all contact persons of infected people. But there are doubts about that. It is difficult to verify how well the offices really worknorth.
By Markus Grill and Mara Leurs, WDR / NDR
After returning from vacation, Alexis S. says he took the Corona test himself. On Tuesday two weeks ago his doctor called him that he was positive. Two days later I received an email from the health department: “Please list all contacts with whom you had more than 15 minutes of face-to-face contact, or were in the same room or for a longer period of time. hosted at a common table (for example, in a restaurant, beer garden) “.
Alexis S. thought about it and counted eight people, seven of them from Munich, one from Darmstadt. Among them was his father, a man in his 70s who has already had two heart attacks. S. says he sent the list of names to the health department that night. But nothing should have happened. A week later, Alexis S.’s contact persons still had no message from the health department, he says. None of the eight have been quarantined to this day.
Upon request, the Munich health department reports that contact persons “are always contacted and quarantined.” At most, “in case of a massive volume”, the contact person could not always be reached “on the same day”.
One group – different treatment
But when you listen to reports from other infected people and their contacts, that’s an understatement. A group of friends who met from different cities in a Munich beer garden in mid-September also tells how different German health authorities handle the follow-up of crown contacts. While the Berchtesgadener Land health department rigorously ordered two weeks of quarantine for a visitor to the brewery after a positive test on the group, the three guests from Munich were also not contacted for ten days.
So how well does contact person tracking really work in Germany? A week ago, 99 percent of health departments responded to a request for NDR, WDR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung” (SZ) replied that they successfully reached “all” or “almost all” contact persons. However, this is inconsistent with reports from those affected who say that the contact persons who reported them to the health department were not contacted at all. What is true?
On Friday, at least, it became clear that Munich’s health authority apparently no longer handles contact tracking on its own. He announced that he would receive “administrative assistance from the Bundeswehr with immediate effect”: 52 soldiers would now support the office in finding contacts.
In Berlin, where the number of corona infections is currently skyrocketing, Bundeswehr soldiers must also support the health authorities in tracking contact persons from today. According to the Federal Ministry of Defense, around 220 soldiers have been deployed to 33 health offices across the country.
The required number of teams was not reached
In mid-April, the Chancellor and the Prime Ministers decided that a team of five from the health authorities would be in charge of identifying the contact persons for every 20,000 inhabitants. Bavaria, for example, has 13 million inhabitants, so there should be 650 such equipment available there.
Last week, the member of the state parliament Sebastian Körber received written information from the Bavarian state government that only 288 of those teams were “in action”. Upon request, the Ministry of Health now shares NDR, WDR and SZ with the fact that this number could be increased to 646 teams “if necessary, including reserve forces.”
Körber is still in awe: “If in an emergency, with thousands of employees in our state capital, you don’t provide the necessary number of important contact tracing teams and rely on administrative assistance from the Bundeswehr, how much do you have to worry about one? in rural areas? secure identification, tracking and monitoring of COVID-19 cases and their contact persons? “
Other federal states are also apparently not currently in compliance with the obligation to provide enough employees for contact tracing. In terms of population, Baden-Württemberg should have 553 such teams, but according to the Health Ministry, there are actually only 292 teams there, and by the end of this week there should be 314 teams.
In Hesse there are 268 teams, 313 would be needed, in Saarland there are 34 teams, 50 would be necessary. Only Bremen claims to have enough staff for this task. The other countries responded evasively or did not respond, or stated that they did not have these figures.
Health authorities confirm problems
Stuttgart is one of the health authorities that admits that not all contact persons can be reached. Employees there are sometimes unable to reach contact persons because the contact details are incorrect or incorrect, the city reports. In Calw, the health department is concerned about the “lack or delay in the transmission of data by the bus companies or airlines”, in Berlin-Neukölln it does not work that delivery cards for bus and plane travelers are transmit electronically and in North Frisia there are infected people who downplay their contact persons “as announced by the local office. In Mülheim an der Ruhr, contact persons” occasionally refused to contact the health department “.
In Bremen, some could not be contacted because they “provided incorrect or incomplete information”, as the authority reports, a phenomenon that was recently observed at a large wedding in Hamm or at the “cat” club in Hamburg, where the forms were entered. contact “Darth Vader” or “Superman”. The offices were also unable to identify these contact persons.
