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meIt was Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn who brought some order to the debate on Friday afternoon. The CDU politician said the quarantine time in the European Union for returnees from risk areas should be shortened to ten days. European health ministers agreed to this at a conference. Until now, the quarantine has generally lasted 14 days. Spahn added that he could well imagine that the shortened ten-day quarantine period could also apply to Germany. In addition, it is being verified whether this period can even be reduced to five days in the case of a negative corona test.
The political debate on reducing the general quarantine period in Germany started on Thursday night. In a report in the daily “Die Welt”, SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach described limiting the quarantine to five days as “very useful”. Other health policy makers commented on the report. The health policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus, also spoke in favor of a five-day quarantine period.
This increases acceptance among the population and “at the same time eliminates the terrain for conspiracy theorists and crown deniers,” he said. Greens health politician Kordula Schulz-Asche said: “For the great mass of the population, it may make sense to first enter an abbreviated quarantine and conclude with a negative test if there is suspicion of contact with an infected person.”
On Friday, North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) intervened and also commented positively on the proposal for a shorter quarantine period. “It would ease the whole system,” Laschet said. Waiting for people to self-quarantine for less than 14 days increases acceptance of the measure. However, this step must be scientifically proven. “If, at the end of the day, there should be a consensus among all virologists that seven or eight days is enough for a quarantine, then politics will not ignore it.”
Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Berlin Charité, spoke on his NDR podcast on Tuesday about cutting certain deadlines. On Friday morning, however, he felt compelled to clarify on Twitter. “Isolation and quarantine are mixed,” he wrote. “My suggestion is to reduce the isolation time.”
Lauterbach: I meant isolation time
The term quarantine refers to people who are not sure they have contracted Corona. Health authorities have imposed a two-week quarantine so far for travelers returning from risk areas, as well as for certain contact persons of an infected person. Isolation, on the other hand, is aimed at people who have been found to be infected and has taken ten days so far. Only after this time has elapsed can it be assumed that an infected person is no longer contagious. With his proposal to shorten the isolation time, Drosten pointed to new scientific findings on the question of how contagious people infected with corona are. In early August, in an article for the weekly “Die Zeit”, he addressed the importance of clusters, which means accumulations of corona infections.
In the article, Drosten wrote: “If you look at the most recent data on virus excretion, an isolation of group members for five days is sufficient.” He would call this “mixture of quarantine and isolation” decomposition time “so as not to dilute the terminology.” However, these terms are now mixed up in the debate. SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach told the FAZ that his lawsuit was referring to a reduction in isolation time. And not the quarantine.
