According to Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, the federal government will probably present a concept for preparing for the Corona autumn before the end of July. "The mask will certainly play a role there," the FDP politician told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. The minister did not give further details.

With regard to the report presented on Friday by a committee of experts on the effectiveness of previous protective measures, the minister said, "Our duty to provide a proportionate legal basis and to use the available knowledge, as well as respect for this evaluation body, dictate that we now first evaluate this report. Then we'll look further."

In Bushman's view, however, lockdowns, school closures and curfews are no longer proportionate in the third Corona year.

According to the expert report, protective measures such as mask-wearing can continue to help against the corona virus. However, the experts put question marks behind many other known requirements; due to a lack of sufficient data, no reliable assessments are possible.

In view of rising infection figures, calls for rapid legal preparation for a Corona autumn wave are growing louder. "Further Corona precautions must now be worked out very quickly so that the proven measures remain possible in the fall and winter if necessary," tweeted Bundestag Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens) on Saturday.

Earlier, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warned of a significant worsening of the situation. "We are facing heavy waves in the fall and winter," the SPD politician said Friday evening on ZDF's "heute journal." Lauterbach promised speed in the new version of the Infection Protection Act after the expert report was presented. In the spring, the provisions had been sharply scaled back, and the current federal legal basis expires on September 23.

Image by Michael Hofmann