BERLIN, 13 Jan: Germany will soon drop a mask mandate on long-distance trains and buses, one of the country\u2019s last remaining COVID-19 restrictions, the health minister said Friday.
\nThe mandate will be dropped on Feb. 2, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced in Berlin.
\nOther European countries already have scrapped mask mandates in public transport, and Lauterbach faced increasing pressure to follow suit in recent weeks. Masks remain mandatory in doctors\u2019 practices, while masks and negative tests are still required to enter hospitals and nursing homes.
\nRules for local transportation are a matter for Germany\u2019s 16 state governments, and an increasing number have dropped or are dropping their mask mandates. Some also have scrapped rules requiring infected people to isolate at home.
\nThe long-distance transportation rules were scheduled to end on April 7, though legislation allows for them to be suspended earlier if the situation is better than expected.
\nAfter one of Germany\u2019s top virologists said shortly after Christmas that the pandemic is over, Lauterbach \u2014 who has long taken a cautious stance \u2014 faced mounting calls from inside and outside the governing coalition to do away with them.
\n\u201cThe pandemic situation has stabilized,\u201d the minister said Friday, with the number of known or suspected infections stagnating or falling, and the number of people hospitalized continuing to decline.
\n\u201cThe population has built up high immunity, and the experts who advise us no longer believe there will be another big, serious winter wave,\u201d he added. \u201cAt this point, we also don\u2019t foresee particularly dangerous variants reaching us in the coming weeks and months.\u201d
\nLauterbach appealed to people who want to continue protecting themselves and others to continue wearing masks voluntarily when indoors and on trains. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN, 13 Jan: Germany will soon drop a mask mandate on long-distance trains and buses, one of the country\u2019s last remaining COVID-19 restrictions, the health minister said Friday. The mandate will be dropped on Feb. 2, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced in Berlin. Other European countries already have scrapped mask mandates in public transport, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-208846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}