Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – After a corona outbreak in a Freiburg daycare center, the state government is trying to prevent further transmissions of the possibly mutated virus variant. Health Minister Manne Lucha (Greens) offered the Minister of Education on Wednesday evening to provide rapid tests from the state’s emergency reserve for emergency care in daycare centers and primary schools. The staff can be tested several times a week. “In view of the worrying mutations, the minister of education is now really called upon to keep the groups in emergency care small and to create the necessary conditions in the day-care centers and schools at short notice to be able to carry out the tests.”
Minister Susanne Eisenmann (CDU) said that evening in Stuttgart that the case in Freiburg had “presented her with a completely new situation”. Now it is first necessary to clarify the facts, she said at an online event of the state CDU with the title “Eisenmann wants to know”. Prime Minister Kretschmann said that he had always made it clear that the decision to open the door would be made depending on the pandemic and that a whole new situation would be faced if one of the mutated viruses should manifest itself.
14 educators and 10 children from the day care center Immergrün in Freiburg may have been infected with a mutated variant of the coronavirus. Two of the children have already tested positive for it, said a spokesman for Diakonie Baden, the institution responsible for the facility. And: “The course of the disease was all moderate.” According to the Diakonie, the corona outbreak goes back to an educator who initially had no symptoms. “When he suffered from a loss of taste and immediately had himself tested, he had already passed the virus on,” said a spokesman in Karlsruhe on Wednesday evening. In the day care center, the six groups are separated. Everything indicates that the virus was then also transmitted to members of other groups through contacts in private, said the spokesman for the German Press Agency. Four of the groups have been in quarantine for ten days.
The health department had “recognized the daycare’s hygiene concept as proper and good”. The authorities would have allowed the facility to take over the emergency care for the children entrusted to it from Monday, it said.
Freiburg’s mayor Martin Horn (independent) said about the outbreak in the daycare center that he was very concerned that the new variant had arrived in Freiburg and that children were affected in particular. “We will be following the situation with great attention and concern and will initiate all necessary measures,” said Horn in the evening. The city is in close coordination with the health department and the affected carrier. After further test results, the crisis team will meet immediately and will discuss how to proceed.
The chairman of the parent council of the Freiburg kindergartens and day-care centers, Simeon Stephan, urgently called for clarification about the situation in the city. “We have to bring light into the darkness,” he told the German press agency. It should be clarified, for example, how strongly Freiburg is also affected by mutated corona variants, what exactly it is, whether this leads to higher infection rates, how quickly children are infected and how the disease progression in these cases differs from others. “There are worries about mutations in parenting.”
Nationwide, the Ministry of Health is aware of 13 other cases with the new virus variants. There are 8 cases in Freiburg and in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district, 3 in the Ravensburg district and 2 cases in the Ortenau district.
Originally, Prime Minister Kretschmann and Minister of Education Eisenmann wanted to announce on Wednesday the decision to gradually open daycare centers and primary schools from next Monday. The opening is now on hold.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210127-99-192578 / 7
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