The health risk and the legal issues raised by the ordinance are “incomprehensible” to him, said Rector Meinhard Lukas. He could not resist the impression that “the quarantine was a bit of a capitulation to an increasing breach of the law” in parts of the population.
The lawyer agrees with the Innsbruck virologist Dorothee von Laer, “deriving something like a ban on endangerment from a wide variety of legal areas”. For example, it is about Section 178 of the Criminal Code, which punishes intentional endangerment of people by a communicable disease with up to three years in prison. Accordingly, one is obliged to do everything reasonable, not to infect someone else if one is infected oneself, says Lukas. “According to the new regulation, this obligation is probably already fulfilled even in public spaces if a symptom-free infected person consistently wears a mask. There is no other way of interpreting that.” Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) is taking on “a great deal of responsibility with the regulation,” said the Rector. Rauch goes “not only medically, but also legally a delicate path”, which is “obvious” for him.
“That would send the wrong signal from a university”
After the ordinance “specifically regulates the questions of danger and risk avoidance”, a non-infected person cannot “easily” stay away from work if a Covid 19 positive is sitting in his office. Lukas emphasizes once again: “It interferes significantly with the existing structure of the legal system. This step does not seem to me to have been thought through to the last detail from a legal point of view. The minister’s decree could, for its part, be fought out of various concerns.” He can only explain why one “feels forced to enact this regulation now in midsummer” by the fact that politicians are ultimately capitulating, since more and more people are no longer adhering to the regulations that have been in force up to now.
The JKU has always taken a very cautious approach in dealing with Corona. Distance learning was pursued very consistently, the mask requirement was adhered to and 3G controls were maintained. He assumes that “we will therefore not exhaust the possibilities of this regulation now”. The university has not yet “finally decided”, but he assumes that “Corona-positive colleagues will receive the recommendation from us to stay at home – regardless of whether symptoms are present. In my opinion, anything else would be wrong Signal from a university.”
Source: Nachrichten
