Berlin At first glance, the Corona autumn begins like the years before. It’s getting colder, people are meeting indoors more often again – and getting infected more often. However, the outlook for the coming months is fundamentally different this year.
Instead of concern, there is cautious confidence that it will be less bad than 2020 and 2021, with intensive care units sometimes full and high death tolls. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Friday that he was expecting a four-digit seven-day incidence again. “But I’m confident that we’ll have it under control.” Corona is currently not so much in the public eye “and it’s up to us to keep it that way”.
After a long break, the SPD politician spoke again about the corona situation in the federal press conference together with the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler.
And Wieler was also confident. The Corona autumn will not be easy. But: “We have never been so well prepared,” he said. “We have medicines, we have enough vaccines.” With these instruments you can “get through the corona winter well”.
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However, such a good course of the pandemic is obviously not automatic. Not only Wieler and Lauterbach say that, but also experts. The Berlin epidemiologist Timo Ulrichs speaks in an interview with the Handelsblatt of “better conditions” in this wave than in previous years.
Worry about staff shortages
In the first fall and winter of the pandemic, there were no vaccines, no widespread immunity in the population and a high proportion of diseases, he says. In the second year the vaccines were available, but with the delta variant there were also more hospital admissions and deaths than with the omicron variant. In addition, the basic immunity is now higher. Through vaccinations, but also because many have been infected at least once.
There has not yet been any increase in hospital treatments.
(Photo: IMAGO/Reichwein)
Nevertheless: “The next wave of the pandemic is rolling on,” he says. “The rebound effect in seasonal influenza and increased failure rates due to Covid-19 diseases at the same time can lead to problems.”
In medicine, the rebound effect refers to when diseases reappear – in this case due to the minimal contact restrictions and the “out of practice immune system”, as Ulrichs says.
Behind this is the concern of high staff shortages due to a simultaneous flu and corona wave, of which Lauterbach and Wieler also warn. Without adequate countermeasures, the health minister said on Friday that there would be personnel problems in critical infrastructure, such as in clinics or in the police force, in a few weeks due to the high number of illnesses.
Not only are the corona infection numbers at a high level, but also other acute respiratory diseases. In the RKI weekly report, the number of people infected with corona for the past week is estimated at 500,000 to 1.2 million. On Friday, the institute reported around 96,000 newly infected people, but according to Wieler, the number of unreported cases could be two to three times as high.
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In addition to Sars-CoV-2, rhinoviruses are among the predominant viruses that lead to visits to the family doctor, for example, the weekly report said. These pathogens trigger colds. In the case of severe respiratory diseases, on the other hand – meaning hospital treatment – there has not yet been a significant increase.
Three scenarios for autumn
There is one big unknown. According to an analysis of the infectious disease modeling network published on Thursday, there is only a sudden increase in severe courses when a new variant emerges in the autumn and winter.
The model, in which the Berlin researcher Kai Nagel and the Leipzig epidemiologist Markus Scholz worked, calculates three scenarios, two of which deal with new variants.
If the current BA.5 variant remains, the wave will not overload the hospitals. “However, there will be permanently high incidences, which are associated with a high level of sick leave,” says Nagel of the Handelsblatt.
If a more contagious variant prevails, which is no more dangerous than Omicron, there will be a winter wave in which the hospitals will be about as burdened as in spring 2022 under the delta wave.
If, on the other hand, a more contagious and dangerous variant prevails, the researchers expect the health system to be “overburdened, which could significantly exceed previous maximum values.”
Lauterbach therefore also appealed to the federal states to keep a close eye on developments in order to find the right time for countermeasures. New regulations for protection against infection will come into force on Saturday, according to which the individual federal states will decide for themselves on stricter rules such as the obligation to wear a mask indoors.
In one fell swoop, additional corona rules don’t change that much in everyday life. In the federal states, it became apparent that the existing mask requirements in local transport with buses and trains would initially be extended.
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Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) told the Handelsblatt, “if there are any tightening, this is because the federal government orders the measures in the law and leaves the states no other choice”. However, should the situation “deteriorate significantly”, we are prepared to take further measures.
New vaccination campaign to start
To ensure that the pandemic remains manageable in autumn and winter, Lauterbach is also relying on a new vaccination campaign, which should start in two weeks at the latest. Currently, only about every fourth person in the group of over 60-year-olds has been vaccinated four times – despite the vaccination recommendation of the Standing Vaccination Commission. An average of around 60,000 people are currently being vaccinated every day, which is still far too few.
An average of around 60,000 people are currently being vaccinated every day, which, according to Lauterbach, is far too few.
(Photo: dpa)
The demand for vaccines adapted to the Omicron variant has also been comparatively low, as can be seen from the number of orders placed by resident doctors.
The practices ordered around 1.06 million doses of the vaccine from Biontech/Pfizer, which has been adapted to the currently predominant BA.5 variant, for this week and only around 629,000 doses for the coming week.
This is the result of figures from the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Zi), which are available to the Handelsblatt. The vaccines from Biontech/Pfizier and Moderna that have been adapted to the BA.1 variant, on the other hand, are hardly in demand anymore. Of these, the practices only ordered around 127,000 cans for this week and around 65,000 cans for the next.
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Zi boss Dominik Stillfried told the Handelsblatt: “In view of the high number of corona infections and the Stiko recommendation, record orders are currently not to be expected.” That should remain the case “if there is no sudden increase in severe courses”.
More: All news about the corona pandemic here in the live blog