Berlin: The German government announced on Wednesday that people who haven’t been vaccinated against Covid-19 will no longer receive compensation for lost wages if they have to quarantine. Workers who were sent into quarantine for at least five days after contact with an infected person or after returning from a high-risk area abroad were being paid by the government. However, Health Minister Jens Spahn said after meeting with the health ministers of Germany’s 16 states that the policy will end as of November 1, as part of the latest government initiative to encourage more Germans to get the vaccine.
Spahn said that getting vaccinated remained a ‘personal decision’, but now that decision will also be accompanied by financial consequences. ‘Some people will say this means pressure for the unvaccinated. I think we have to look at it the other way around — it is also a question of fairness,’ he said.
In Germany, those who have already been vaccinated are no longer required to quarantine.
Official figures show that only 63.4 percent of Germany’s population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Wednesday, well below the 85 percent required by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) health agency. Since the vaccination campaign has run out of steam, there has been debate over possible restrictions on the unvaccinated, although compulsory vaccination has so far not been proposed for any part of the population.
In many German states, restaurants and other leisure facilities are allowed to restrict entry to those who have been vaccinated or have recently recovered from the disease.
From October, anyone wishing to obtain a rapid negative test to prove that they have been vaccinated will have to pay for it — ending the government’s initiative to make it free. Germany reported 10,454 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours and had an incidence rate of 65 new infections per 100,000 people in the past week.
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