Will Omikron, the new and highly contagious variant of the coronavirus, soon slow down the country?

If you believe the warnings from the south of the republic, then that is conceivable.

Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is campaigning for the quarantine rules to be relaxed.

"With a rapidly growing epidemic, we cannot simply paralyze the whole country from one day to the next," said Söder of the "Bild" newspaper.

The Robert Koch Institute must make a proposal.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in politics.

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Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.

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Shortly afterwards, Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) followed up.

He said on ZDF: "It is important that we check the quarantine there." There is also sympathy in Berlin to address the issue.

The deputy chairman of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Sepp Müller (CDU), brought up a shortened free test option after just five days in order to prevent mass quarantine.

The focus is primarily on the critical infrastructure, i.e. hospitals, transport companies, energy providers and so on.

USA have already halved quarantine time

The quarantine rules had previously been tightened in several federal states because of Omikron, including in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. The Ministry of Health in Stuttgart has proven infected people generally quarantined for ten days. Vaccinated and convalescent people can test themselves free after seven days - but not if they are infected with Omikron.

Close contact persons and household members of infected people have to be in isolation for two weeks if they have not been vaccinated or have recovered. Unless it is an infection with Omicron. Then they have to stay at home for 14 days, also vaccinated. If Omikron soon becomes the dominant variant in Germany, as expected, the current quarantine orders could hit thousands upon thousands of citizens and their failure could put a strain on the country's infrastructure, so the concern.

The American health authority Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed the way earlier this week and halved the quarantine time and isolation for infected people who show no symptoms of the disease from ten to five days.

For this, the authority has been heavily criticized in some cases, also because the reduced isolation time does not even make it mandatory to test oneself.

So far there are no meaningful virological data on this, and there are no possible consequences for the spread of Omikron.

So far, scientists have only found indications from laboratory studies and epidemiological indications from infection clusters, which indicate that omicrons after infection in the nasopharyngeal mucosa probably multiply earlier and significantly faster than the delta variant.

There is nothing to suggest that the virus will go away any faster

So far, however, nothing indicates that the virus will disappear from the nose and throat any faster.

The question of whether there are differences between those who have been vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated has also not been scientifically clarified.

In the case of delta and alpha variants, researchers have at least been able to demonstrate that the viruses can be easily detected with PCR tests for an average of five and a half days in infected vaccinated people, and seven and a half days in unvaccinated people.

Apparently, the vaccination slows the increase in the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract.