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As head of the Robert Koch Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler is not a man for good news in the corona pandemic.

However, what he and his colleagues published in the latest management report on Friday evening sounded like a horror vision even by his standards.

The third wave is already here - and could flood the whole country at Easter.

A more dramatic situation threatens than before the lockdown in December.

Wieler's pessimistic prognosis is controversial: For example, Hasan Alkas, economics professor at the Rhein-Waal University in Kleve, also expects the number of infections to rise sharply in the next few weeks.

There is no talk of relaxation in the RKI scenario

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However, he expects the seven-day incidence to be around 170 per 100,000 population by the end of April.

Before Christmas it had peaked at around 200.

In addition, Alkas assumes that the situation will ease from then on at the latest.

“I expect that we will have survived the worst at the end of April and that things will look better,” said Alkas.

Hasan Alkas is an economics professor at the Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences in Kleve

In the RKI scenario, however, there is no talk of relaxation.

In the post-Easter week at the latest, the development really picks up speed.

Then incidences from 230 to over 500 are possible.

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The reason for the scientists' concern is the unchecked spread of the British virus mutation B.1.1.7 in Germany.

This is significantly more contagious than other variants - and also probably causes somewhat more severe disease courses.

So far, the declining number of infections with other virus variants has masked the rapidly increasing number of infections with the British mutant.

However, since the number of people infected with this dangerous variant has doubled every twelve days since the beginning of the year, it will soon be dominant.

The RKI speaks of an "exponentially increasing trend", which it classifies as "worrying".

Source: WORLD infographic

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The development of the so-called reproduction number is also important evidence of a third wave.

The nationwide seven-day R-value given in the RKI's evening management report was only five times below one in the past two weeks and, above all, significantly above it in the past few days.

A value above one means that 100 infected people theoretically infect more than 100 other people - a value consistently above one is therefore a signal for an increase in the number of infections.

According to the RKI management report, the seven-day R-value from Sunday evening was 1.19 (previous day 1.19).

If things went on in the same way, that would mean, in purely mathematical terms, that from Easter week the number of cases with the mutant would rise above the Christmas level.

Other variants would be pushed back almost completely.

Rising death rates and increasing utilization of the intensive care units would be the result.

Economist Alkas considers this point of view to be questionable because it simply continues the previous trend.

He has created a forecast model for Covid-19, which is intended to make the further course of the epidemic more precisely calculable based on past data.

This shows that so far there have only been short phases of exponential growth - around October.

And the R value has never been above one for longer.

The reasons for this are the relatively long incubation period of the virus and the short time during which the infected are contagious.

Alkas assumes 5.5 days, he refers to data from the RKI.

Other scientists and experts assume a significantly shorter period.

That also explains the differences in the results.

Are we in lockdown again at Easter?

For the President of the Robert Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, the current infection numbers are not acceptable.

He compares the fight against the pandemic with a marathon: "We are in the last third - and that is known to be particularly exhausting."

Source: WELT / Christoph Hipp

It remains to be seen whether the experience gained so far from the pandemic can be transferred to the mutant.

In other countries such as Great Britain or Ireland this was successful, but severe restrictions were necessary.

There, the seven-day incidence of more than 600 cases has now fallen below the German level.

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In Germany, too, there shouldn't be any significant easing in the current situation, says Alkas.

The current restrictions are the starting point for his calculations.

Nevertheless, he remains optimistic.

"Only if the Germans expand their contacts further, become more mobile and the vaccination rate does not increase, the RKI scenario could occur," he says.

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