That totally backfired. The new corona rules for autumn, which Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach presented with the planned new Infection Protection Act, are causing great confusion. Here again two levels are mixed up: the political and the medical.
Lauterbach wants to create a political incentive to vaccinate in general by notifying “freshly vaccinated people” whose injection was no more than three months ago that they would be exempted from wearing a mask. But medically, this rule makes no sense at all. There is no three-month period in which a vaccinated person is shown to be less contagious or better protected than, say, someone who was vaccinated three and a half months ago. And a general vaccination every three months is also rejected by Karl Lauterbach as "medically pointless". So it's totally confused.
How often should one be vaccinated – assuming one has made a fundamental decision to do so? According to the federal government's vaccination dashboard, 76 percent of the population has received two vaccinations so far. 62 percent are boosted, i.e. vaccinated for the third time. Studies show that these three vaccinations already provide reliable and long-term protection against what is particularly important to prevent: serious illnesses or even death from Covid-19.
"Vaccination continues to offer good protection against serious illnesses," writes the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). "The data indicate that the protective effect after the basic immunization also drops here, but less so than in comparison to any or symptomatic diseases." As an American study showed, the protection against necessary hospitalization is two months after the third vaccination at 91 percent. After four months it is still 78 percent. This is above the EMA's approval expectations. This had set a 50 percent protection as a threshold.
In short: Anyone who has been vaccinated three times is definitely better protected than those who have not been vaccinated or have recovered. There are also "no significant differences in the effectiveness between the different vaccines," according to the RKI. However, the vaccines from Biontech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson offer less protection against the omicron variant than against the delta variant.
However, you have to put it into perspective. "The vaccines protect us from the virus not being able to spread in the body in such a way that one has to go to the intensive care unit and be artificially ventilated there," said immunologist Andreas Radbruch, scientific director at the German Rheumatism Research Center, in an interview at the end July. "You are only marginally protected from infection, and you still get sick." Many vaccinated people experience corona diseases with severe symptoms.