Berlin, December 11, 2008 : .The German Parliament has passed an amendment to make Covid-19 mandatory for all healthcare workers.
On Friday, the country’s Lower and Upper Parliaments (Bundestag and Bundesrat) amended the country’s infection protection act, meaning people who work in hospitals, doctors’ offices or nursing homes will have to provide proof of full vaccination protection or recovery by mid-March 2022, reports Xinhua news agency.
The aim of the new regulation is to “better protect” elderly citizens and people with existing illnesses from infection, the government said, particularly as there have been repeated outbreaks of Covid-19 in nursing homes in Germany.
Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach stated that “we cannot combat this pandemic on the medium-term without increasing vaccination rates.” He made the remarks in the Bundestag Friday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had originally believed enough citizens in Germany could be convinced to get the vaccine.
However, he said on Wednesday that a general vaccination obligation was now necessary in order to “protect all of us and to ensure the health of all of us collectively”.
Only those people who are unable to receive the vaccine due to medical reasons will be exempt from the new rules.
The country’s vaccination campaign is now picking up again, with 1.1 million vaccine doses administered on Thursday.
However, the overall vaccination rate has only reached 69.4 per cent, according to official figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the Ministry of Health (BMG).
A booster vaccine has been administered to at least 17.7 millions people (or 21.3 percent) of the nation’s population.
Meanwhile, Germany’s federal and state governments aim to mobilise 30 million vaccine doses by Christmas.
To speed up the country’s vaccination campaign, the amendment also allows for trained pharmacists, veterinarians and dentists to administer vaccines for a limited period of time.
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