2G, 3G, booster vaccinations, tests - but what really helps against the explosive number of corona infections.
The Charité virologist Christian Drosten paints a less optimistic picture.
Hamburg / Berlin - The virologist at the Berlin Charité clinic Christian Drosten has a gloomy forecast for the Corona winter 2021. No wonder when you consider the steadily increasing number of corona infections and increasingly full hospitals.
Drosten does not even consider new contact restrictions to be ruled out.
He suspects that the Germans will be facing a "very strenuous winter".
"We now have a real emergency situation at the moment," said the head of virology in the Berlin Charité in view of the situation in the intensive care units in the NDR podcast "The Coronavirus Update".
"We have to do something right now."
Booster vaccination as a savior?
One must now also think about measures that one had actually hoped to no longer have to take. "So we now probably have to control the infection activity again through contact measures - not likely, but surely." However, Drosten admitted that it could be legally difficult to enforce broad Corona contact measures.
"You could rely on the booster vaccinations instead of contact limits," said Drosten. “That's something I really believe in.” However, that takes time and good planning. First you have to vaccinate the elders for the third time. This could already prevent many deaths. For young people, the booster vaccination is “a lifeline for them
Transmission protection ".
In the long term, the “ideal goal” must be: “a population that has been completely vaccinated three times over”.
According to the virologist, other European countries are gradually reaching an endemic situation.
The vaccination coverage in Spain is around 80 percent.
This is noticeable, the country has around 6,000 new infections a day.
That is just a tenth of the maximum values in the third wave.
In Germany, things are currently worse off than a year ago.
Drosten on corona measures: 3G is not enough
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Christian Drosten warns of the Corona winter.
© Michael Kappeler / dpa
Even 3G - i.e. access for vaccinated, convalescent and tested people - is not enough, according to Drosten's assessment, to get the fourth wave under control.
Because: "Testing does not protect against infection-" Unvaccinated people can become infected if they go to an event with negative tests, because vaccinated people can also pass the virus on.
Although the 2G rule closes the "back door" of the test option, it has the disadvantage that contacts are shifted to private life.
After people who have just been vaccinated can pass the virus on, the virus will simply find its way into private households.
Drosten: Political proposals start in the wrong places
Christian Drosten also points out that the proposals that are made in politics “do not work exactly where our worry zones are in society.” So the decisions from Bavaria and Saxony are no guarantee that the increase in incidence can be slowed down.
Regularly testing vaccinated and unvaccinated people is "logistically impossible". In
principle, offering
tests again for free
is not wrong, but it is "put out as an emergency brake, and it will not be under any circumstances".
It is now important to make it clear to the population that “it is very serious at the moment,” said Drosten.
"We are in a bad situation: We have 15 million people who actually should have been vaccinated and who should be vaccinated." The way out of the pandemic is clear: "We have to close the vaccination gaps." (Jv with dpa)
List of rubric lists: © Michael Kappeler / dpa