Specialist health service can no longer guarantee complete contact tracing

In the last 24 hours, 92 new SARS-CoV-2 virus infections were reported to the Health Service. This is the highest daily figure since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. As a consequence, not all contact persons of positively reported cases can now be contacted personally by the Health Department. People who have tested positive are being asked for active assistance. All persons with whom contact was made from 48 hours before the onset of symptoms are to be entered in a form. This applies in particular to conversation situations longer than 15 minutes and closer than 1.5 metres. Such persons should then be quarantined for 14 days.

As soon as the situation has been defused, official quarantine orders can then be forwarded. However, this is not possible at the moment. The population of Jena is asked to support this procedure.

"We ask the Jena population: protect yourself and your loved ones. And as difficult as it is for all of us: please avoid social contacts over the holidays as far as possible and observe the applicable contact restrictions of two households. Public health services are already massively overstretched. Further increases in the number of cases due to the holidays will come at a high cost in human lives."

Thus the appeal of the Jena crisis team under the leadership of Benjamin Koppe as well as Lord Mayor Dr. Thomas Nitzsche, Mayor Christian Gerlitz and Eberhard Hertzsch, for which is also certain:

"The Free State does not seem to be up to the fight against the corona pandemic so far. Warnings of the massive occurrence of a second wave have been issued repeatedly from Jena since the autumn holidays." In several letters to the state government, consistent measures were demanded. Head of department Koppe emphasizes: "For the hesitant implementation, the price must now be paid: Second highest infection rate of all federal states, highest mortality of Covid sufferers in Germany. And further, the municipalities are even hindered in their efforts to contain the pandemic."

Mayor Gerlitz commented:

"While the incidence in Thuringia is on the verge of exceeding 300, the independent cities and counties, for example, continue to be prohibited from enacting stricter regulations for emergency care in daycare centers.Overall, it may be popular to not want to impose more regulations on people, especially around Christmas. It is certainly not responsible."

"We completely fail to understand why it is taking the Free State nearly two months to implement the federally mandated option to offer voluntary rapid testing for visitors to care homes. In order to protect the nursing homes with the high incidence values in Thuringia, Jena, in contrast, relies on the path implemented in many federal states to consistently test all visitors," underlines Social Affairs Director Hertzsch.

Lord Mayor Thomas Nitzsche underlines:

"The situation is just getting worse nationwide. The local health offices are not only permanently overloaded, but they simply cannot cope with the further spread of the virus in real time. Also, we do not consider the strategy of the Free State to set up the vaccination centres in a small-scale manner to be suitable for starting large-scale vaccinations as soon as the vaccine will be widely available."

Together, Mayor Nitzsche and Mayor Gerlitz appeal to the Prime Minister to act all the more decisively now after his long silence.

"In Saxony, in view of the numbers, it has been recognized that the rudder can now only be turned with drastic measures and broad public relations. In Thuringia, however, we continue to experience a blockade attitude of the ministerial bureaucracy against more consistent municipal efforts. This is where the Prime Minister must intervene."