Minister, the Chancellor has Corona, as do Ministers Faeser and Geywitz, and the incidences across the country are increasing rapidly.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how serious is this autumn going to be?

Friederike Haupt

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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That depends on us.

However, we can already see that we are at the beginning of an autumn wave.

The data that we have on the virus variant that is now circulating leads us to assume that there can be a very high number of infected people, which would again place a heavy burden on our healthcare system.

And then on the horizon there is still the question of whether we will get new variants.

About "killer" variants, as you feared in the summer?

I already considered that unlikely in the summer, and I can rule it out for the autumn.

That is the good news.

Those variants aren't on the horizon right now, fortunately.

The bad news is that there are now a few variants in which the immune escape is very pronounced.

If, for example, the BQ.1.1 variant prevails, those who became infected in the summer would probably be easily infected again.

In other words, everyone should be very careful now.

But that doesn't happen.

The Oktoberfest is currently underway in Munich, thousands are swaying in tents, and the number of infections is exploding.

Everything is going to be alright.

In the end we will solve the problems together.

The fact that contradictory signals are coming from Munich is nothing new.

For example, I was warned by Mr. Söder and his Minister of Health that the Infection Protection Act had to be stricter, that I had to assert myself more against the FDP.

The fact that this criticism was presented from the beer tent with a beer mug in hand, so to speak, corresponds to the way politics is done there.

Fortunately, this is not representative of the whole of Germany.

The population has learned to deal with Corona.

Do you have the impression that in view of the many burdens – war, inflation, energy crisis and so on – the citizens will at some point no longer be able to?

That they are expected to do too much?

An impertinence would be a strong new corona wave - in addition to all other crises.

But we have made all preparations to avoid this situation.

The better people are protected, the less difficult autumn will be.

We have done everything for this here in my ministry.

That's what we've been working on all summer.

Economics Minister Habeck recently said about employees in his house that they were getting sick, had tinnitus, burned out and were overworked.

Do you also observe something like this with your people?

Yes, unfortunately that also applies to us.

My ministry has been in a state of emergency for two and a half years.

The top performers were extremely stressed, working on weekends and into the evenings.

But so far the team has overcome all challenges.

Back to the question of whether society will eventually be overwhelmed by crises.

Don't people need bread and circuses, so they shouldn't go to the Oktoberfest, even though that might not be the most sensible thing to do right now?