In view of rapidly rising Corona numbers, stricter rules to combat the pandemic will apply from this Monday in Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and parts of Baden Württemberg, among others. Saxony, which is particularly affected, is restricting large parts of public life. Apart from libraries, all cultural and recreational facilities, bars, clubs and discos will close. There are no restrictions on shops providing basic services.

The German Nursing Council has advocated that unvaccinated staff be dismissed in the event of compulsory vaccination in nursing homes. "If the legislator demands that only vaccinated and recovered people are allowed to work in nursing homes, the institutions have no choice but to get rid of these employees," said Nursing Council President Christine Vogler to RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (Monday).

"Anyone who becomes a gateway for Corona in the nursing home simply cannot work there," Vogler added. She added that the legislature must therefore clearly stipulate that nursing homes are allowed to dismiss unvaccinated employees. Most recently, at the Minister Presidents' Conference on Thursday, the Länder had called on the federal government to introduce compulsory vaccination for staff in nursing homes. Politicians of the "traffic light" parties had also spoken out in favour of compulsory vaccination in nursing homes.

North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) has called for more control pressure to enforce the stricter Corona requirement. "We need much more regular spot checks - not only in public transport, but also in gastronomy and everywhere where 2G and 3G or 2G plus applies," the CDU politician said on Sunday in the ARD programme "Report from Berlin". North Rhine-Westphalia does this in regional transport in such a way that the state gives money to the train operators to hire additional control staff.

"We now have a de facto lockdown increasingly for the non-vaccinated to protect them - also to motivate them to perhaps get vaccinated after all," the NRW Minister President stated. But this will not work without controls. "We need control pressure. And we also need tougher penalties for violations, which we are doing in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, with a new catalogue of fines.“

In the fight against the pandemic, the Minister President explicitly pleaded for solutions that take into account both the different incidence rates in the federal states and the vaccination status of the people. "I think we have to be careful that we don't slam the door in the faces of those who have done everything our society wanted them to do - namely, to pay attention and get vaccinated - with a general lockdown," Wüst emphasised.

He also sees no basis at present for doing the same in regions where vaccination has been carried out very properly and where people are paying attention as in regions where the development is completely out of control.

Wüst appealed to the players of the First Bundesliga to live up to their role model function. "They should get vaccinated. That would be my urgent request. If they don't comply - there are prominent examples of this - then we have to try to regulate it legally. That's what we're doing right now."

Original text: dpa/ga

Translation: Mareike Graepel