German Finance Minister: Goal Is To Leave Pandemic Behind Us This Summer
15 April 2021
By David Barwick – Frankfurt (Econostream) – German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on Thursday said that the government’s goal was to overcome the pandemic this summer, and called for decisive action to counter the current increase in Covid-19 case numbers.In an interview with German daily Saarbrücker Zeitung, Scholz said, ‘Our goal is to make good progress with vaccination week by week so that we can finally leave the pandemic behind us in the summer. But this also requires that the number of newly infected people does not increase too much and throw a spanner in the works - which is why we need to act decisively now.’
A change to the Infection Protection Act under consideration to allow the German federal government to counter the pandemic more efficiently ‘must stipulate that if the number of infections increases too much, something must be done’, he demanded. ‘And in such a way that everyone knows: This is having an effect.’
That, he said, is a clear benefit of relying on the seven-day incidence of the disease. ‘It would be irresponsible now to have a very long scientific debate about what could be done differently without taking action’, he said. ‘We cannot write doctoral theses and post-doctoral dissertations now. We must protect the health of our citizens.’
Asked whether curfews were the answer, he replied, ‘Curfews work. We have seen in many countries that they help to reduce infections. It's about restricting contacts and this is one way to achieve that - among many others that are also provided for in the law.’