German health minister refuses to disclose personal vaccination info while tightening mandates

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is refusing to disclose information regarding his COVID-19 vaccinations, despite expanding the country’s vaccine mandate to force citizens to disclose theirs. 

Lauterbach tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month despite having had four injections. He is taking Paxlovid and reported mild symptoms, but admitted they were “more severe” than they should have been, according to Berliner Zeitung. 

“Despite four vaccinations and Paxlovid, I had more severe symptoms than expected,” said Lauterbach. 

But when asked when he received his fourth shot, Lauterbach refused to say, suggesting that his medical information is a private matter. 

"Please understand that we cannot go into details on medical matters,” said the Health Ministry in a statement. 

The refusal comes as Lauterbach moves to escalate the country’s forced vaccinations by introducing a color-code update to the Corona-Warn-App (CWA) vaccine passport mimicking the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) vaccine passport system. Under the Infection Protection Act, the updated app will show as green for those considered “freshly vaccinated”. They will be permitted to remain mask-free in indoor public areas. The CWA will turn yellow if the citizen may need to isolate for seven days, and a red color code means the holder of the “passport” is not considered freshly vaccinated and must wear a mask in public. 

“The Minister of Health wants to ‘mark’ the bad old vaccinated and unvaccinated with separate colors of the Corona-Warning-App in the future,” tweeted Professor Stefan Homburg. “Train conductors and cinema staff are constantly roaming the rows and checking the color of maskless people. Madness in the final stages!” 

The health minister has defined the term “freshly vaccinated” as having been injected within the last three months and recommends the fourth shot for all age groups. But while citizens will be forced to regularly disclose if they were recently vaccinated, Lauterbach declines to reveal that information about himself. 

“For 1.5 years, citizens have been condemned to disclosing their 'medical matters' to any bouncers, waiters and train inspectors. The Minister of Health himself, on the other hand, does not like to publish such information,” wrote Die Welt journalist Tim Röhn. 

“Despite moving to this color code vaccine passport system, Lauterbach has admitted that the goalposts could shift at any time and that if too many freshly vaccinated people make use of the mask exception, Germany will change the rules and close the exception,” reported Reclaim the Net. 

Like Germany, some governments around the world have taken draconian measures to separate the injected from the non-injected. 

In addition to color-coded vaccine passports, the CCP has also introduced mandatory bracelets for some Chinese citizens in Beijing. The bracelets track their temperature every five minutes and, through the corresponding mobile app, can access the phone’s camera, microphone and location, according to Reclaim the Net. 

Using wristbands to separate the injected from the non-injected was proposed by former Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in December 2021 amid his aggressive campaign against unvaccinated citizens, whom he said were “walking around with a machine gun firing Delta variants at people.” 

The wristbands were to be tested in shopping malls, where those who were injected would be given green wristbands to wear, marking anyone without one as “unvaccinated”, who would face restricted movement. 

Bennett scrapped the initiative after shopping mall businesses threatened to take legal action.