Fall and winter will be a risky time for the unvaccinated.

There are hardly any measures conceivable that can protect you from infection with the dangerous delta variant of the coronavirus.

This is the result of calculations by the physicist Kai Nagel from the Technical University of Berlin.

“In order to stop the growth of infection, it is not enough, according to the simulations, to restrict measures only to the unvaccinated,” Nagel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS).

Justus Bender

Editor in politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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At best, daily mass tests before all “school activities, work activities and some of the leisure activities” could “greatly reduce” the infection growth.

However, this does not mean rapid tests, but the more reliable PCR tests.

And: that everyone, including those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered, can be tested so often.

It is questionable whether such measures would be politically and legally feasible.

Experts expect there will be incidence rates of several hundred per 100,000 unvaccinated in seven days during the fall and winter.

More than ninety percent of all Covid patients in hospitals are already unvaccinated.

SPD criticizes Spahn's plans

The plan by Health Minister Jens Spahn from the CDU to assess the pandemic in the future primarily based on the occupancy of the hospitals is viewed critically by the coalition partner SPD. According to Spahn's draft law, the hospitalization rate should become the "essential benchmark" of corona policy. The health policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Sabine Dittmar, said: “We shouldn't just rush to the hospitalization rate. I don't agree with that. "

The opposition also criticized Spahn's course.

For the FDP, health policy spokeswoman Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus said that the “sole focus on the degree of hospitalization” was “too short-sighted”.

“We need a combination of several factors for an accurate assessment of the pandemic.

The hospitalization rate, the occupancy of the intensive care capacities and the vaccination rate should therefore be taken into account.

Above all, this combination must be binding nationwide in order to avoid a new patchwork of regulations, ”said Aschenberg-Dugnus of the FAS

Greens: coalition is "irritatingly haphazard"

The health policy spokeswoman for the Greens, Marie Klein-Schmeink, said the Union and SPD acted "irritatingly haphazard" in the Corona policy. “For several months it has been clear that the incidence alone is no longer sufficient as a criterion in view of the vaccination rates, or at least that the incidence values ​​have to be adjusted. It would have been Spahn's job to bring about a change in the Infection Protection Act. Nothing happened, "said Klein-Schmeink of the FAS." We are in favor of a step-by-step plan that is based on the incidence and other criteria such as the hospitalization rate. It would also be conceivable that the situation in the intensive care units would also be included. ”With the regional measurement of hospitalization there are“ currently still problems ”.

In general, “the federal government must ensure that all federal states use the same indicators. Otherwise there will be considerable chaos that will endanger the public's acceptance of the measures, "said Klein-Schmeink. A first draft law from Spahn's ministry provided for the federal states to decide whether to use other indicators in addition to the hospitalization rate.