Pandemic: RKI protocols for Corona crisis consultations published – Politics – Schwarzwälder Bote
Pandemic RKI protocols for Corona crisis consultations published
dpa March 25, 2024 – 9:25 p.m
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa
The government measures to contain the corona pandemic were sometimes highly controversial. Minutes of discussions in the crisis team of a central health authority are now being made public.
Berlin – Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has countered suspicions about external influence on a basic risk assessment by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) at the beginning of the Corona crisis in 2020. “The RKI worked independently of political instructions,” said the SPD politician in Cologne in response to a report by the online magazine “Multipolar,” which published partly redacted minutes of the RKI crisis team from January 2020 to April 2021. There were calls from parts of the opposition for a committee of inquiry.
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According to the report, a protocol from March 16, 2020 speaks of a prepared new risk assessment by the RKI: “It is to be scaled up this week. The risk assessment will be published as soon as (passage redacted) gives a signal for this.” The magazine “Multipolar” concluded that the tightening of the risk assessment as the basis for later Corona restrictions was not based on a technical assessment by the institute, but on the political instructions of an external actor. His name is blacked out in the minutes.
Lauterbach: “So there was no political instruction”
Health Minister Lauterbach said the “redacted employee” was an employee of the RKI. “So there was no political directive to which the RKI would have reacted here.” If there are redactions in the papers, this usually affects employees who need to be protected from the public. As the ministry explained, the RKI announced the new risk assessment for the population in a press conference on March 17, 2020. It was changed from “moderate” to “high”.
The reason given was a very strong increase in proven infections – even if there were initially fewer cases overall than, for example, the flu, as it was said. Health authorities have increasingly reported that they cannot trace contact persons. The situation differed depending on the region. The ministry pointed out on Monday that the RKI had carried out a technical assessment, which should be seen in the context of the time. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic five days earlier, on March 11, 2020. “Multipolar” wrote that the upgrade was made “without any indication in the previous protocols.”
Lauterbach emphasized that the RKI’s performance in the early phases of the pandemic was “excellent”. Far fewer people died in Germany than in other countries with a comparably old population. The minister spoke out in favor of a scientific review of crisis management, for example in the “Health and Resilience” expert council that had just been set up at the Chancellery. A political debate in which small groups tried to use the issue and use it to make politics against the state would “not move us forward.”
Kubicki demands full transparency
FDP Federal Vice Chairwoman Wolfgang Kubicki called on Lauterbach to publish all of the RKI crisis team’s minutes without redactions. “Sooner or later he will be forced to do this anyway, either judicially or politically,” Kubicki told the German Press Agency. It is becoming increasingly clear that the RKI “served as a scientific façade” for the health policy of the then minister Jens Spahn (CDU) and probably also of Lauterbach.
According to its own information, “Multipolar” legally enforced the publication of the minutes following a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The portal, which has made it its mission to present different perspectives on social and political issues, is considered by critics to be close to conspiracy narrative publications.
Published minutes are summaries
The RKI explained that the protocols were summaries of discussions and decisions within the crisis team. “These discussions reflect open scientific discourse in which different perspectives are addressed and weighed.” Individual statements did not necessarily reflect the then agreed position of the RKI.