30.08.2024, 09:10 a.m.
Berlin. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) defends the federal government’s actions during the corona pandemic and once again calls for an examination of the measures taken during the period. “We have nothing to hide,” the SPD politician told “Stern”. “Sure, we didn’t do everything right at the time, but we did a lot of things right.”
Lauterbach continued: “Germany has taken a more cautious approach than many other European countries with a similar age structure. As a result, significantly fewer people have died here. We can be proud of that.” When the situation is reviewed, this course will “also prove to be correct in retrospect,” the minister said confidently.
FDP politician Wolfgang Kubicki, Vice President of the German Bundestag, recently accused Lauterbach of having exerted political influence on the Robert Koch Institute in order to deliberately exaggerate the extent of the pandemic.
It is “wrong to make a scandal out of something that is normal,” Lauterbach said in response to Kubicki’s accusation. “My ministry has the technical supervision of the Robert Koch Institute and we work closely together. Now they are trying to make a scandal out of the fact that we agreed at the time to determine the risk levels.” But that was a completely normal process. “The RKI gives an assessment, the ministry and the minister himself bring their technical view into the discussion.”
In February 2022, the then RKI chief Lothar Wieler and Lauterbach initially considered downgrading the risk, but then postponed it for a few weeks because the death toll was still at 200 to 300 deaths per day. “In the end, we always found a common line,” said Lauterbach. “This is not a scandal, it was our job.” He expects a more objective discussion from the review of the pandemic.
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