Berlin – The planned introduction of the 2G rule in Berlin poses serious challenges for the city’s authorities. And there are great doubts as to whether these new provisions can even be implemented.
From Monday, only those who have been vaccinated and recovered are allowed to go to restaurants, cinemas, theaters and museums. If you can only show a negative corona test, you have to stay outside. The 2G rule also applies in leisure facilities such as saunas and entertainment venues such as amusement arcades. Only those who have been vaccinated and recovered are admitted to outdoor events with more than 2,000 participants, including football games.
One is skeptical, among other things, at the police union (GdP), in which officials are also organized. “In any case, a clear 2G regulation is better than the previous mix because it creates uniformity,” says GdP spokesman Benjamin Jendro. But it is also clear that neither the police nor the district authorities can check this across the board. “Corona violations are piling up in the districts, processing will still take several months because neither the field nor the office staff have been added,” says Jendro. So there will be at most selective samples. “In view of the number of staff and the daily tasks, no politician should get the idea of sending hundreds to restaurants, cosmetic studios or subways,” warns the union spokesman.
18,000 corona advertisements since March
There are around 9,000 restaurants in Berlin, most of them in the city center. In the general security service of the central public order office, which is responsible for the districts of Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding, Moabit and Gesundbrunnen, 50 employees are responsible for the controls, according to the authority. The 15 other employees in the back office have therefore received around 18,000 corona reports on the table since March. There is currently a processing backlog of around 5000 ads. It would take around ten months to process this. So now there is the tightening of the corona rules, although not a single employee has been added. According to reports, the situation is similar in other districts, for example in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Marzahn-Hellersdorf.
“An even higher control density is not possible in terms of personnel or arithmetic,” said a spokesman for the central district office. “At this point it is important to appeal to the visitors of gastronomic and leisure facilities to consistently avoid the facilities where the operators do not fulfill their control obligations and to report the grievances via the public order office online app so that there can be targeted controls by the Ordnungsamt can take place. “
It is also completely unclear how the control of the planned 3G rule will be enforced in the workplace. “We are waiting to see which specific new regulations will be adopted and which legal bases will apply. We will then implement these quickly, ”says a spokeswoman for the responsible Senate Department for Integration, Labor and Social Affairs.
The Association of Business Associations in Berlin and Brandenburg (UVB) is also skeptical. “From our point of view, tightening the contact rules in the direction of 2G is the right way to go,” said UVB Managing Director Alexander Schirp. “To do this, however, the controls must be significantly intensified and the restrictions enforced across the board. Rules that are only written on paper are of no use. ”Companies could best protect themselves if only those who had been vaccinated, those who have recovered and who have been tested are allowed to come to work. Schirp supports the proposal of the Conference of Health Ministers that employers should have a right to information about whether their employees have recovered or have been vaccinated. With this information, they could implement their operational hygiene concepts most effectively, says Schirp.
The Berlin health authorities reported 2874 new infections within one day to the Robert Koch Institute on Wednesday. The 7-day incidence is now 263.4 cases per 100,000 population.
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