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Breathe a sigh of relief: the mask requirement has fallen almost everywhere - it remains to be seen whether it will be necessary again in autumn
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Dejan Ristovski / Stocksy United
Corona has lost its terror for many people in the past few months.
With the appearance of the omicron variant at the end of last year, the virus spread at a previously unknown speed and infected millions of people in Germany within a few weeks.
However, most of them only fell ill relatively easily or not at all, also thanks to the vaccinations.
Is the state of emergency of the past few years over?
The forecasts of the experts at a glance:
endemic prospect
One hope that is often expressed is that the pandemic will become endemic.
The term, which is often used somewhat imprecisely, describes a state in which the waves of infection flatten out and the effects of the infection process are therefore less serious, at least for a large part of the population.
According to Friedemann Weber from the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, when it comes to the question of the endemic, it depends on whether you mean the disease Covid-19 or the Sars-CoV-2 virus.
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An endemic state would be reached when there would no longer be a strong accumulation of infections or diseases.
"In the case of Covid-19, that could soon be the case, because immunity - acquired through vaccination and infection - protects against it quite well," says Weber.
"In the case of the virus, however, new variants are constantly being introduced, which ensure a rapid increase in the number of cases." Basically, endemic does not mean that Sars-CoV-2 or Covid-19 are harmless.
People can still get sick and die if the pathogen is constantly circulating.
Also, the risk of Long Covid cannot be ignored just because the virus will eventually be classified as endemic.
level of immunity
How things will continue in the coming months also depends on how great the immunity in the population is now.
In other words, how many people have built up protection against further infection and/or illness via a previous infection or vaccination.
A model recently presented by scientists at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) provides indications of the extent of immunity.
According to this study, only seven percent of the people in Germany are immunologically naïve - i.e. neither vaccinated nor come into contact with the corona virus through infection.
In general, the larger the proportion of this group, the easier it is for the virus to spread.
At seven percent, the chances of the virus spreading should already be considerably limited.
However, it is not certain how well the remaining 93 percent are protected from further infection and illness.
The vaccinations provide very reliable protection against severe Covid 19 diseases, but many people who have been vaccinated twice or three times have become infected, especially during the omicron wave.
The RKI researchers also point out that the immunity achieved varies greatly from state to state, mostly due to the different vaccination rates.
The figures determined also varied significantly in the age groups: among older people over the age of 60 with a higher risk of a severe course of the disease, the researchers assume that around four percent are immunologically naïve.
Among the children, however, the number of those who have no immunity is greater.
Because there is still no Covid 19 vaccine for children under five years old, and only a limited vaccination recommendation for five to eleven year olds.
changes in the virus
How the situation will develop in the coming months also depends on the further development of the virus, which is difficult to predict.
"Other viruses, such as influenza viruses, change more gradually and less erratically than Sars-CoV-2 in the past two years," says Richard Neher, who researches the evolution of viruses at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel.
"It is conceivable that Sars-CoV-2 will change more gradually and less dramatically in the future." It is unclear whether and when this change will come.
The experts consider the emergence of a “killer variant”, which Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach spoke of some time ago, to be rather unlikely.
But even without an extremely immune-resistant and disease-causing variant, it has not been finally clarified how good and how long the immune protection in the population has been achieved so far.
Experts assume that it generally increases with the number of contacts that create immunity – i.e. with the number of vaccinations or infections that have been passed.
Unvaccinated people who have only been infected with omicron in the past few months may not be better protected next fall than those who are completely immune-naive.
Especially if your infection was only mild, according to some experts, the immune system may not have built up sufficient protection in the long term.
more on the subject
People with previous illnesses: For these children, the end of the mask requirement does not mean freedom - but permanent isolation by Katrin Langhans
"If omicron-like variants still predominate in our country next autumn/winter, we can probably cope well with the number of immune naïves," says immunologist Carsten Watzl, Secretary General of the German Society for Immunology.
"If Delta-derived variants predominate, the group of immune-naïve is larger, and that could still cause problems."
The Basel virus evolution researcher Neher notes as an advantage that the immunity in the population is becoming more diverse because people have different vaccination and infection histories.
"As diversity increases, variants that bypass the immunity of the majority of the population become less likely."
load on the intensive care units
Against this background, can one assume that overloading the healthcare system and intensive care units is a thing of the past?
"As far as Covid is concerned, in my opinion yes, even with a new variant with a pronounced immune escape," says Christian Karagiannidis, scientific director of the Divi intensive care register.
“We would have to be very unlucky there.” However, the burden on the healthcare system is made up of the existing capacities and all the sick people – “we have to expect a significant wave of respiratory diseases in autumn/winter, such as the flu”.
It is extremely difficult to predict whether the measures will have to be tightened again in autumn, says Hajo Zeeb from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in Bremen.
"Very tough measures such as lockdowns should no longer be necessary, especially if further boosts are given over the summer."
wbr/dpa