Germany Sounds Alarms About People Out Of Range Of COVID-19 Alerts: Eastern Europeans Also Mentioned

Investigative portal correctiv.org was quick to convince doctors that the statements were inaccurate and journalists took the words out of context.

Now, two months later, he finally dares to publicly acknowledge that in metropolitan areas, which are home to large numbers of welfare recipients and people of migrant origin, the number of coronavirus infections is in fact several times higher than the national average. .

“The reluctance to see reality will cost people’s lives,” said communal politicians. Political correctness will help no one: concrete action must be taken, Welt am Sonntag wrote on Sunday.

The Federal Minister for the Family, Franziska Giffey (SPD), and the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet (CDU), launched an accelerated vaccination program to be carried out in poor high-altitude areas with high infection rates. .

A pilot project of this type has already started in Cologne.

In neighborhoods where the number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants has reached 600 and more in the last 7 days, mobile vaccination centers were installed on Monday, with long lines that soon spread.

He was silent because he feared the racist debate

And prehistory was like that. Thomas Voshaar, president of the Union of Pneumological Clinics, told Bild, according to a telephone survey of chief doctors. November and 2021 In early January, “90 percent of intubated people, the most seriously ill people, were of migrant origin.”

The survey clearly showed that “there is a population group that does not reach the warnings about the coronavirus at all. These are people of migrant origin. “We call these patients” patients with a communication barrier, “Th. Voshaar.

Commenting on the situation, Professor Lothar Wieler, director of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), admitted to the newspaper: “And I heard the same thing. But this is taboo. Four million people in Germany belong to this group. That represents 4.8 percent. However, much more than 50 percent of this group of people live in intensive care units. “

“We should try to reach certain people through magnets. This is extremely unfavorable for Berlin. This is a serious problem, “he said.

But no less problematic is the fact that the country’s government is not taking action, because it fears the debate on racism, this suspicion was expressed this time by the chief physician of Miorz Lung Clinic Th. Voshaar: “All people with the I spoke to, including Mr. Spahn (the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, CDU – ed.), They shook the following topic: ‘Protect God, protect God!’

The RKI study confirmed the thesis: the poor also suffer more from the pandemic

When, after the publication of the publication, allegations of racism were indeed heard in the public sphere, the head of the RKI began to withdraw, claiming that the figures mentioned had been obtained only from individual hospitals.

However, the latest RKI study confirmed the thesis published by Bild in February: the poor, as well as migrants, suffer much more from the pandemic, including 70%. more deaths from COVID-19 than among those living in affluent areas, Bild himself reported in late April.

Other posts soon tackled the subject more boldly. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recalled an interview with Cihan Celik, an intensive care physician at the Darmstadt clinics in August, who had already pointed out that most of his patients were of migrant origin.

According to Celik, there are other commonalities among people seriously ill with COVID-19: They often belong to socially disadvantaged groups, work in unsafe conditions, and live in small apartments with many others. Language is also a problem. At the same time, Celik called not to associate the high number of infections and serious diseases with the behavior of immigrants.

Some migrants have difficulty persuading them to get vaccinated

However, the skeptical attitude of migrants towards the state and the cultural factor also influence it, the newspaper Die Welt analyzes the reasons for the higher morbidity.

“It is not just a socio-economic problem,” said Bettina Dickes (CDU), chief district administrator for my spa town Bad Kroitznach, Rhineland-Palatinate.

“There is no increase in coronavirus infections among people born here who work on the conveyor belt and live in very modest conditions,” says the politician.

“A closer look revealed that there are a disproportionate number of people with a migratory background among those infected with COVID-19. They make up between two-thirds and three-quarters of those infected,” Dickes told Die Welt.

Only that group of people pay less attention to quarantine restrictions and other limitations of daily life.

“Because they see the pandemic and its aftermath as German hysteria, as the Baptist community in Eastern Europe believes. Because they consider vaccination to be silly. After all, because there are communication problems, ”says the municipal politician.

J. Spahn, the country’s health minister, also noted that many migrants are skeptical about vaccination against the new coronavirus. “Encouraging migrants to get vaccinated is a big challenge,” Bild said.

Hamburg Senator for Social and Health Affairs Melanie Leonhard (SPD) has a similar opinion. According to her, immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia “often have problems with vaccines.”

“We still have a lot of explanatory work to do here, but we are ready for it,” he told Die Welt.

You will be vaccinated in the mosque

There are similar problems with the Muslim faith in Hamburg, said city politician Sophie Fredenhagen. And the language barrier is not the main problem here. “Understanding the language and communicating are two different things,” so it is necessary to work with the mosque communities to reach as many people as possible.

An example of such cooperation is the Turkish Muslim community in Cologne. This weekend, residents of Cologne’s Erenfeld and New Erenfeld districts, which are home to an especially large Muslim population, are invited to get vaccinated at the Central Mosque, which commits to the Turkish Islamic Religious Organization (DITIB). The Astrazeneca vaccine will be available to all mosques in the area.

The Cologne pilot project, launched on Monday, is a success. After the cancellation of the previously scheduled vaccination order, the inhabitants of socially weak urban areas with a higher number of infected have the right of priority to vaccination. Immigrant language aides should be used for this purpose.

An information campaign was launched this week in the high-infection areas of Essen and Duisburg: vaccination is announced here in nine languages. The aim of the information is to combat “myths about alleged infertility as a result of vaccination,” German radio reported.

Germans feel pushed into the second row

Naturally, the preference for vaccination given to migrants, welfare recipients, and others in poor areas has caused dissatisfaction among some wealthy Germans, including those who pay heavy taxes. After all, there are people in wealthy areas who are at risk of serious illness due to health problems due to the fighting.

“Why are people who have exemplified all the restrictions now pushed into the second row?” Said Welt am Sonntag from the frustrated perspective.

Representatives of the Alternative to Germany party soon raised this question. “It’s not clear to me why urban areas that don’t follow the rules are so nice now,” said Martin Vincentz (AfD), a health expert in the North Rhine-Westphalia parliament.

This is a really tricky subject, Welt am Sonntag admits. If people in poor areas really deliberately ignore hygiene and safety distance rules, are they worthy of protection? “Of course it is,” the newspaper responded, citing arguments right here: after all, it’s not people’s fault that they live on high floors and can’t work remotely; Furthermore, the language barrier often makes it difficult for immigrants to be informed; and finally, only by reducing the total number of infections will it be possible to lift the current quarantine restrictions for everyone.