The nationwide incidence of corona is currently rising steadily, with more and more people becoming infected with the highly contagious omicron variant. To help you be prepared in the event of possible domestic quarantine or isolation, here are tips on how to be prepared.
The Omikron variant makes the Corona case numbers skyrocket. The course of the disease is usually mild – nevertheless, more and more people have to be isolated or quarantined due to a corona infection.
Preparation for a domestic corona quarantine
Many people wonder how supplies of food and other items will work in the event of a domestic corona quarantine. Anyone infected with the corona virus or who has had contact with an infected person is not allowed to leave the house for seven to ten days – not even to go shopping.
Here’s how you can help yourself:
- Friends, relatives or neighbors who are not ill will certainly be happy to buy for you.
- In an emergency, you can turn to the neighborhood assistance, which incidentally also supports when people can no longer shop alone due to their old age or a previous illness or are afraid of infection.
- You can also have groceries delivered to your home contactless. We have taken a close look at online supermarkets.
- On networks like next door.de or quarantaenehelden.org, people can network and help each other online.
- If you still want to be prepared in case of domestic Corona quarantine, a few packages of pasta and rice, a bag of potatoes, fresh apples, a few jars of your favorite pasta sauce, and canned fruits and vegetables will suffice.
- Check that your emergency pharmacy is still stocked with enough painkillers, cough medicines and antipyretics. You should also have a clinical thermometer at home.
Important to know: There is no need for hoarding purchases. The fear of shortages of food and hygiene products is unfounded, as the experience from the first Corona waves shows.
Federal office advises emergency stockpile for 10 days – not only in the Corona pandemic
The German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BKK) recommends having a private emergency supply at home for at least ten days in case of a catastrophe. This recommendation has been around since 2016, it has nothing to do with the current situation. The BKK list applies in the event of a hurricane, heavy snowfall or flooding, where there are no food supply options – the list is not specifically for the Corona pandemic.
Emergency stockpile: food and drink for emergency situations
In its "Guide to Emergency Preparedness and Correct Action in Emergency Situations", the BKK gives the following advice Tips on which drinks and foods are useful to stock up on. The thought behind it: You should have enough food in the house to get you through ten days without shopping well. The shopping list is based on a calorie requirement of 2.200 calories per day.
Food supply for ten days for one person – shopping list:
- Beverages: 20 liters
- Cereal products / bread / potatoes / pasta / rice: 3.5 kg
- Fruit / nuts: 2.5 kg
- Vegetables / legumes: 4.0 kg
- Dairy products or. long-life vegetable drinks: 2.6 kg
- Meat / fish or legumes / tofu: 1.5 kg
- Fat / oil: 300 g
- Sugar, honey, jam, sweets: at will
Tip: The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture has designed a handy stock calculator that can be used to calculate quantities for any number of household residents and days.
Emergency stockpile for vegetarians
The Federal Food and Agriculture Office has also created a table for an emergency vegetarian stockpile. This is not much different from the general list: It lists only tofu, vegetarian patties, sausage and spread as substitutes for meat and fish. A list for the emergency stockpile for vegans is not available yet.
Tips for a smart and sustainable emergency stockpile
The official recommendation of the Federal Ministry contains a shopping list with a total of 48 individual products, whose requirements have been calculated exactly to the gram. In our eyes, this makes the purchase unnecessarily complicated.
The list also includes many products that not everyone likes – or that make no sense in view of the climate crisis: Asparagus or cherries in a jar, carrots, tuna and canned corned beef don’t have to be in order to survive ten days without shopping in a possible emergency situation.
Here’s why: If you decide to stockpile some foods, don’t make it unnecessarily complicated. If the worst comes to the worst, if you don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables for two weeks, it’s not a big deal. It is important to have a basic supply of water and food to fill up and at the same time taste good. Simple pasta, rice or potato dishes are a classic here.
And: If possible, set aside a sustainable emergency stockpile for yourself, that you do not have to dispose of after a few months because the food has expired or you do not actually like to eat it.
If you stockpile food that you also eat in everyday life, you can use it up at any time and buy more right away – Keyword: Dynamic stockpiling. Newly purchased supplies always go to the very back of the shelf. Older products thus automatically move to the front and are used up first.
Make your own products for emergency stockpiling
You don’t have to buy all the products for emergency stock in the supermarket, but can also make a lot yourself: