Health Minister Lauterbach wants to make public the names that appear in the Robert Koch Institute's coronavirus protocols. Those affected must agree.
Wants to release positions blacked out from “RKI files”: Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
SEDAN dpa/epd | Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced greater transparency in the protocols of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which were made public since the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic. “Yesterday I had the protocols largely redacted,” the SPD politician said in Deutschlandfunk on Thursday.
You should check again to see what absolutely needs to be made illegible. “This means that the Robert Koch Institute must now ask permission from all persons named in the minutes or whose interests are mentioned, so that the deblacking can be carried out.” This will take some time, “maybe four weeks”, but then a much clearer variant could be presented, the minister stated.
A few days ago, the online magazine “Multipolar”, close to the scene of conspiratorial ideology, made public the partially redacted minutes of the RKI crisis team from January 2020 to April 2021. As a result, the calls became louder to a review of state policy to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths in Germany.
Lauterbach again said that he had nothing to do with the writing of the minutes. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Robert Koch Institute had to black out certain names and also certain things that affected third parties. He is in favor of maximum transparency.
Against conspiracy theories
“I just don't want to give the slightest impression that the Robert Koch Institute is deliberately hiding something or that there is even political interference on the part of the federal government, that the Robert Koch Institute does not publish things here,” he explained. Lauterbach.
When asked what a review of Germany's coronavirus measures should look like, Lauterbach did not want to commit. “If there is a parliamentary review, Parliament must also decide how it will be done.” In general, there needs to be more transparency “so that more conspiracy theories do not accumulate at that time,” the minister said.
Lauterbach once again acknowledged that measures such as school closures and contact restrictions for children had gone too far, even though they corresponded to the state of science at the time. “I think that may have been the central error,” said the minister.
Four years ago, the coronavirus spread around the world in a few weeks. In Germany, politicians decided, among other things, to close schools and impose general exit and contact restrictions. The FDP has long called for the creation of a Bundestag study commission to examine the management of the pandemic.