Overview

• The Saxon Landtag committee is reviewing the state's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on policies enacted between 2019 and 2024.
• Virologists Detlev Krüger and Alexander Kekulé highlighted ineffective later-phase measures such as resource-intensive contact tracing and vaccination mandates.
• Krüger emphasized that children were known to be low-risk by 2020, questioning policies targeting them, and criticized labeling unvaccinated individuals as 'pandemic drivers.'
• Kekulé criticized the government's poor communication, which he argued undermined public trust and played into the hands of vaccine skeptics.
• Both experts called for greater independence of scientific institutions and a broader range of expert input to guide future health crises.