Difficult decision-making phase: Drosten: "Otherwise it can strike back"

In view of the increasingly difficult interpretation of the pandemic development, the Berlin virologist Christian Drosten has pleaded for cautious political action.

The head of the virologist at the Charité said on Thursday at a hearing in the parliamentary advisory committee for the Covid-19 pandemic of the Bundestag, predictions are becoming increasingly difficult in view of the increasing number of vaccinations, and politics must act with a certain sense of proportion and a certain degree of caution.

Contact reduction measures are effective, but one shouldn't take back too much at once.

"Otherwise it can strike back."

With incidences rising again (case numbers per 100,000 inhabitants), the question arises in the future what that means - because the underlying disease burden in the population will be further reduced over time by the increasing number of vaccinations. “This is actually one of the most difficult phases for politics to navigate the whole thing,” said Drosten. In Germany, vaccination progress is not yet as great as in Great Britain. In people over 70, who have a higher risk of severe disease, the progress is already quite pronounced. Against this background, Drosten sees modeling, which was an important basis for taking measures over the winter, increasingly difficult.

Experts have been proposing for a long time to look less at the seven-day incidences and more at hospital admissions for Covid-19 or at the incidences in people aged 60 and over. However, to the best of his knowledge, hospital admissions are not yet notifiable, said Drosten. He suggested that a smooth transition should only be introduced when looking at the parameters when there is greater protection of risk groups through vaccination, for example after the summer. For a while, new infections and new admissions could be collected in parallel to protect yourself. So far, the reported incidence has predicted the burden of disease very well, stressed Drosten.

In the long term, the virologist expects the virus to behave like a cold coronavirus. Transitional states are to be expected in the next two to four years - the virus will use vaccination gaps. Political follow-up will in future include the fact that once the disease burden is reduced, more infections can be tolerated. The question is how far this can go and how intensively one wants to pursue this with PCR tests.