Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) expects that the Corona measures in Germany will be relaxed after the omicron wave has been exceeded be able. At the moment, given the increasing number of cases, one still has to hope “that we can get there without tightening up,” he said on Monday evening after the end of the federal-state consultations on ARD. But once the wave has been overcome, “for example in mid-February” and the number of infections has gone down again, “then the time has come to relax”.
Lauterbach had already stated several times that the peak of the omicron wave in Germany would probably be reached in mid-February. Until then, he expects several hundred thousand new infections per day. In view of the rapidly increasing numbers, the federal and state governments decided on Monday to maintain the applicable everyday requirements for the time being. However, they did not rule out further steps if the health system were to be overburdened.
Lauterbach fears that normal wards in particular will be under a lot of pressure in hospitals because omicron infections are often milder than infections with the delta variant. But it could be that there are also major problems in intensive care units. So that the hospitals would not be overwhelmed, Omikron should be at most about 10 to 15 percent as dangerous as the Delta variant, he calculated.