Health Minister Lauterbach assures us that the blacked out passages in the Robert Koch Institute’s Corona consultation protocols should be released as far as possible. But that could take time.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has announced greater transparency in protocols from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) that have become public from the initial phase of the corona pandemic. “Yesterday I arranged for the protocols to be blacked out as much as possible,” said the SPD politician on Deutschlandfunk. It should be checked again to see what absolutely needs to be made illegible.
The SPD politician also assured the provision of data on which an RKI study was based, which looked at the effectiveness of corona measures. A final report on this study published last summer concluded that mask requirements and contact restrictions made a significant contribution to combating the pandemic.
In a letter to FDP Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki, which was first reported by “Welt am Sonntag” (WamS), Lauterbach announced that he would make the data requested by Kubicki about this study available on the RKI website. According to WamS, experts criticized unsuitable model calculations, incorrect comparisons and hasty conclusions in the final report.
Regarding the RKI protocols, the Health Minister said, “The Robert Koch Institute must now ask permission from everyone who is named in the protocols or whose interests are stated so that the de-blackening can take place.” That will take a while, “maybe four weeks,” but then a much clearer variant can be presented.
Redacted minutes of the RKI crisis team
A few days ago, the online magazine “Multipolar” made public the partly redacted minutes of the RKI crisis team from January 2020 to April 2021. As a result, calls for a review of state policy to contain the corona pandemic with tens of thousands of deaths in Germany became louder.
Lauterbach said again that he had nothing to do with the redactions of the minutes. According to the Freedom of Information Act, the Robert Koch Institute had to black out certain names and things that affected third parties. He is for maximum transparency. “I simply want to avoid giving the slightest impression that the Robert Koch Institute is deliberately hiding anything here or that there is even political interference on the part of the federal government that the Robert Koch Institute is not publishing things here.”
When asked what a review of the Corona measures in Germany should look like, Lauterbach did not want to commit. “If there is a parliamentary review, Parliament must also decide how this is to be done.” Overall, there needs to be more transparency “so that more conspiracy theories don’t build up around that time,” said the minister.
Source: Stern
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