Like many other (educational) institutions in the country, the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz will advise its employees to always stay at home despite the quarantine if they are infected with the corona virus. Rector Meinhard Lukas announced this on Friday. The health risk and legal problems raised by the regulation are “incomprehensible” to him. He couldn’t resist the impression that “the quarantine was a bit of a capitulation to increasing law-breaking” among parts of the population. In any case, it is “legally difficult”.
With the “increasing violation of the law”, Lukas refers to the increasing ignorance of the population with regard to the previously applicable corona measures. The lawyer also agrees with the Innsbruck virologist Dorothee von Laer, “who deduces something like a prohibition of danger from the most diverse jurisdictions”. This concerns, for example, Article 178 of the Criminal Code, which punishable by a maximum of three years in prison for intentionally endangering people through a contagious disease.
“A difficult path legally”
One is therefore obliged to do everything reasonable, not to infect another if one is infected oneself, says Lukas. “Under the new regulation, this obligation is likely to be fulfilled even in public areas if a symptom-free infected person consistently wears a mask. There is no other way to interpret that.” Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) takes “a great deal of responsibility with the regulations”, according to the rector. Rauch is going “not only medically, but also legally a delicate path”, which is “clear” to him.
After the regulation “specifically addresses the questions of risk and risk avoidance”, an uninfected person cannot “easily” stay away from work if a person who is corona-positive sits in their office. Lukas emphasizes again: “It significantly disrupts the existing structure of the legal system. This step does not seem to me to be legally thought through to the last detail. The minister’s decree could in turn be challenged for various reasons.” Why people “feel compelled to issue this decree now in the middle of the summer” can only be explained by the fact that politics eventually capitulates, as more and more would no longer be appropriate, would comply with the previously applicable regulations.
JKU continues to rely on careful handling
The JKU has always been very careful with Corona. Distance learning was pursued very consistently, the mask requirement was met and 3G controls were maintained. He assumes that “we will not exhaust the possibilities of this arrangement now”. The university has not yet decided “definitely”, but he assumes that “Corona-positive colleagues will be advised by us to stay at home – regardless of whether there are any complaints. Anything else would, in my view, be the wrong signal from a university.”
Source: Krone
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