After long months of lockdown, Germany is looking forward to the first easing.
But these will remain a short pleasure: New record highs for incidences are looming.
Munich - They were awaited with great longing: first relaxation after the long wait.
The Federal Republic has been in gradual lockdowns since November.
A great corona fatigue has spread.
The news of cautious openings in March and planned openings in April was all the more pleased.
But these could only be of extremely short duration if the statistician Katharina Schüller is right.
Gloomy Corona forecast for Easter 2021: new record highs for incidences
She is a board member of the German Statistical Society and assumes that the next lockdown is ready for Easter.
Because the number of cases and thus the incidences have recently risen sharply again.
"If everything goes on in the same way and there are no biases due to increased tests or more frequent tests by people with a suspected mutant, the result is a reporting incidence at Easter that is 2.5 times higher than today," she explains to
Focus Online
.
Then Germany would have a seven-day incidence of more than 200 per 100,000 inhabitants.
She considers a lockdown to be "very likely".
That would be new record values.
Because the numbers weren't even that high just before Christmas, the high point of the pandemic so far.
At that time, the values were always just below 200.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) even estimates in its daily status report from last Saturday (March 13th) that the incidence will rise to as much as 350 by mid-April (15th week).
An assessment that Schüller also considers realistic.
The British virus mutation is spreading - that's why the corona situation is so delicate
The virus mutation B.1.1.7 is primarily responsible for the unfavorable development in the number of cases.
The British variant is also spreading rapidly in Germany and, according to calculations by the RKI, is increasingly displacing other variants.
The increased risk of infection with the mutation is also reflected in the incidence: The infections with B.1.1.7 increase “every week by about 46 percent and have thus doubled about every 12 days.
In contrast, the 7-day incidence of all other variants shows a decrease of around 19% per week, ”said the RKI in its management report.
Another problem is that the spread of the mutation is currently heralding a third wave of the pandemic in Germany.
The openings decided by the federal and state governments now have an effect on the beginning of this new wave of infections, as the RKI physicist Dirk Brockmann
explains
in the
ARD morning
magazine.
"This accelerates once again the exponential growth that we saw with the new variant B.1.1.7 even before the easing," says Brockmann.
"Various measures taken in the last few weeks will still have a real impact," Schüller agrees with
Focus Online
.
Stuttering vaccination campaign: Delayed vaccinations create additional pressure
In addition, another problematic factor joins the already disadvantageous situation.
Because the only real ways out of the pandemic are now an effective test strategy and the vaccination campaign.
The latter in particular ran and runs very slowly.
The temporary suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine is causing an additional delay.
If the pace is not increased significantly, Chancellor Merkel will have to break her promise.
She had announced that by September 2021, everyone willing to be vaccinated would also be able to make a corresponding offer.
If the speed increase does not succeed, according to calculations by the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
for people who do not belong to a preferred vaccination group,
this date could
drag on until November of this year.
Further long lockdowns would then probably be inevitable.
(mam)
List of rubric lists: © Annette Riedl / dpa
