Column on corona communication and recovery status

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2-G notice in a shopping arcade (icon image)

Photo: Daniel Reinhardt / picture alliance / dpa

In Douglas Adam's absurd sci-fi work »The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy«, the protagonist Arthur Dent learns shortly before the destruction of the earth that from a galactic bureaucratic point of view he actually had every opportunity to find out about this demolition during construction of a hyperspace express route. When he complains that you can't just do it like that, he is told that the planning drafts have long been public and accessible to everyone. "Yeah, yeah," he replies, referring to the notice, "in a locked filing cabinet, in an unused loo, with the sign on the door: Beware Biting Leopard."

This or something similar happened to some recovered citizens in the past week, who had to wonder why they were suddenly no longer considered recovered. On Friday, the Federal Council passed new measures, the most important change of which affects people who have survived a corona infection in the last six months. Your status as a recovered person was valid for six months to date, now this time has been halved overnight. The Robert Koch Institute published this new rule on its website on Friday, and it has been in effect since Saturday. In other words, all certificates of recovery older than three months are invalid as of the weekend. From now on, autumn infected people have the same status as unvaccinated ones,which of course has a significant impact on daily life, on access to rooms where the 2G rule applies or on entry requirements - especially if it happens without announcement, planning or any form of transfer time. This information also comes as a surprise to trade associations, as well as to people in the health professions, for whom this rule change has a fundamental impact on their working lives. In addition to the unfortunate communication, the sources that now seem to have been submitted later do not help much to justify this reduction to three months (basically, by the way, it is actually only two months, because the date of the positive test must be at least 28 days ago before then for Recovered status applies for the remaining 62 days of those three months).The RKI says about this shortening: "The duration of the recovered status was reduced from six months to 90 days, since the previous scientific evidence indicates that unvaccinated people after an infection they have had a reduced and temporally even more limited protection against an infection compared to the delta variant reinfection with the omicron variant."

Snuggly mediation

The institute therefore refers to the current state of research and to the advice of the Standing Vaccination Commission, which in its current bulletin recommends “a single dose of vaccine after a SARS-CoV-2 infection with a gap of at least 3 months to the infection”.

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In this official announcement, however, she also explains: »Stiko emphasizes that the chosen interval of 3 months at the earliest is the result of a consideration in which the reduction in the protective effect of the basic immunization that then began, but also the lack of data on the Duration of the protective effect of the booster vaccination compared to the omicron variant were taken into account.

Stiko points out that this recommendation was made on the basis of currently limited data.«

A British study and a report by the British health authority UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) were linked as further sources to justify the new rule, but the three months are not explained in these documents.

This strategy and rule change based on a recommendation is not what I criticize, but rather its mumbling mediation and the lack of transparency, which almost borders on negligence.

In addition, there is a slipped timing when communicating this relevant information, which has a direct and existential influence on the everyday mobility and work situation of many people.

Be sure to have your towels ready

The same applies to the notification that people who have been vaccinated with Johnson and Johnson are no longer considered "fully vaccinated" - a scientifically sound decision, but which is sent too quickly and underexplained in the hope that everyone Those affected are smart and fast enough to obtain this information, for example, by visiting the RKI website every day and reading all the bulletins - so as not to be caught off guard by the change in their own legalistic situation, like Arthur Dent.

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Bottleneck in PCR tests: why the corona numbers are becoming increasingly inaccurateBy Holger Dambeck

Another example is now the adjustment of the test strategy, which is currently being discussed, to support the completely overloaded laboratories. At the request of the state of Berlin, the health ministers are advising to ration the PCR tests: people with a symptom-free corona infection who have a positive rapid test should not use a PCR test as confirmation; as well as people whose Corona warning app lights up red, they should only do the quick test in the future. Instead of expanding the laboratory capacities, fewer PCR tests should simply be made - an availability problem, the solution of which is to be the inaccurate rapid test using the acute omicron wave. That would be a massive change in the course of the testing strategy - to the detriment of our information about what is happening in the pandemic, and again a factorthat promotes injustice. And here, too, I naturally expect more political communication and mediation work, which will explain to me why it is no longer possible to carry out sufficient testing during a pandemic. The answer can't be 42 like Douglas Adams.

We are obviously in a strategic transition phase, particularly with the new developments dictated by Omicron, or as Douglas Adams might say: by all means, have your towels ready.

And it is precisely in these transit moments of a government that is primarily reacting that people want all the more classification and clarification that goes beyond »Don't panic!«.

The information request is simple, the following two questions in particular must be answered over and over again: What is happening right now - and why?

If transparency can create more acceptance, measures and new regulations must not be so hastily planned past us like a galactic hyperspace express route.