Read the video transcript here
Georg Fahrion, DER SPIEGEL:
"Omikron has already been detected in China."
Heiner Hoffmann, DER SPIEGEL:
"It really has just swept through here like wildfire."
Marc Pitzke, DER SPIEGEL:
»One has the impression: Close your eyes and go through.«
Jörg Schindler, DER SPIEGEL:
"Nevertheless, Boris Johnson has so far refrained from imposing tough restrictions."
Katharina Peters, DER SPIEGEL:
"When you observe Germany from Korea: There are times when you somehow despair of your home country."
Omikron - the new variant of the coronavirus is spreading worldwide.
The individual risk of getting seriously ill seems to be slightly lower than with Delta, but still higher than with previous variants.
Scientists are particularly concerned about the high rate of infection.
Great Britain is one of the countries in Europe that is currently experiencing the highest number of new corona infections - sometimes more than 200,000 per day.
Jörg Schindler, SPIEGEL correspondent
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T he hospitals are very heavily burdened, but not yet overloaded. And above all, it is obviously the case that the people who are admitted with Omikron stay relatively short and only relatively few of them end up in the intensive care unit. At the moment the burden is actually more due to the fact that an incredible number of people who work for the NHS, for the national health service, have to self-isolate or cannot work because they are infected themselves. "
“Up until Christmas, it wasn't even compulsory to wear masks in public transport. They have made this mandatory again and a few minor restrictions regarding vaccination certificates, for example for going to night clubs and bars. The Scots, the Northern Irish, the Welsh have introduced very strict measures, no lockdown yet - and Johnson, also because he is under domestic political pressure, shies away from them very much. "
“The thing is, the UK is benefiting right now from the fact that it was so badly off in the first few waves. We had infinitely high infection rates, generally much higher than anywhere else in Europe, and we still have one of the highest death rates per capita. There are actually experts who say that in parts of the country there is of course now herd immunity due to the high vaccination rate and the high disease rate that we had. "
In the USA, too, the infection curves go steeply upwards - in relation to the number of inhabitants, roughly the same as in Great Britain.
More than a million new infections per day have already been registered.
Around 60 percent of this is attributed to Omikron.
Marc Pitzke, SPIEGEL correspondent
»In New York City, for example, where I am, it's different, here the omicron rate is a little over 88 percent.
Most of my acquaintances and friends, who have all made it through the last year, have become infected with Omikron, but most of them just lie in bed for a day or two with a bad cold and then are on good terms again. "
In the USA, too, the number of hospital admissions is well below that of the delta wave.
Marc Pitzke, SPIEGEL correspondent
»That doesn't mean that the hospitals get along well with it, you hear from many hospitals, many clinics, especially here in New York, that the staff is again very overburdened, that there are no beds that people can support have to wait for normal operations.
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The USA now officially has more than 830,000 corona deaths, according to official figures more than any other country in the world.
The best-known virus expert Anthony Fauci warns of many more deaths, especially in areas with insufficient vaccination rates.
Marc Pitzke, SPIEGEL correspondent
»In Florida, for example, Fauci is a persona non grata.
Governor Ron DeSantis is campaigning against faucism, as he calls it.
He calls it Fauci fascism.
There are whole regions in the US, especially rural regions, where the corona pandemic no longer plays a role at all, is no longer an issue at all, where people don't get vaccinated, where you turn up your nose when you wear a mask.
Unfortunately, experts here fell into this political polarization just as much as everyone else. "
In some countries in the south and east of Africa, on the other hand, the omicron wave is already flattening out again, for example in Kenya.
Heiner Hoffmann, SPIEGEL correspondent
“We had positive rates of almost 40 percent at times, which means more than every third corona test was positive.
Those were the official numbers.
I have spoken to several hospitals, doctors, test centers.
They said they sometimes had a 70 percent positive rate.
That was a crazy wave that rolled through here. "
"There are some serious cases, including those with Omicron, but these are all unvaccinated," is how the doctors I spoke to describe. There were also some deaths. Otherwise, the burden on hospitals is significantly lower than in previous waves. A very similar situation as it was in South Africa. "
“In principle, life went on, when you walk around here, go to bars and restaurants, it also looks as if the Omikron wave never happened. They're still full, even indoors. The quarantine requirements are hardly observed either, because there are so many people affected at the moment. The vaccination rate in the general population for two vaccinations is around eight percent. It has to be said that the availability of vaccination doses is not the reason for the failure at the moment. It was like that for a long time. There are now many in Nairobi, there is also a relatively high amount of vaccination in the capital, so acceptance is quite high and the infrastructure for it is good. In rural areas in particular, many do not see the need, you have to know that the contamination is already extremely high. Some studies say 70 percentwho already had Covid. "
Achieving a higher vaccination rate is still important, say experts.
Otherwise, there is an increased risk that further variants will emerge.
In addition, vaccinations protect against other variants for a longer period of time and better than immunity through infection.
China has largely had the pandemic under control with extreme containment measures since April 2020 and officially only has around 120,000 cases of infection - with a population of 1.4 billion.
How well this strategy works with Omikron is questionable.
Four cases of the new variant have so far been detected in mainland China.
Georg Fahrion, SPIEGEL correspondent
»Omikron is of course a huge potential problem for China because the two most heavily inoculated vaccines here are dead vaccines. And from the results so far, we know that they have little or no effect against an infection with Omikron. That said, if Omicron got here, it's kind of like hitting an entirely unprotected population. That's not the case: 85 percent of the Chinese have been vaccinated twice. That is an enormous achievement. But you actually have to add a booster, in the best case an mRNA booster. But there is still no self-developed Chinese mRNA vaccine and the western ones from Moderna and Biontech are still not approved. "
When 63 infections with the Delta variant became known shortly before Christmas in the metropolis of Xi'an, China responded with a lockdown for 13 million inhabitants.
The city is still cordoned off.
Georg Fahrion, SPIEGEL correspondent
»A very strict lockdown, basically the largest outbreak and the strictest lockdown since Wuhan.
With strict curfews, with people complaining on social media that they are not getting enough food.
As soon as Omikron gets here, it can be assumed that we will have cases like Xi'an more often again. "
It will soon be almost impossible to prevent Omikron from arriving here more and more: The Olympic Winter Games are due to begin in Beijing on February 20.
Georg Fahrion, SPIEGEL correspondent
»Tens of thousands of athletes, officials and reporters from all over the world are expected and, unlike other arrivals in China, they will not be quarantined. That doesn't work at all, because an athlete who is in quarantine for 14 to 21 days does not come out in competition form. So the deal is that the people who come to the Olympics are tested before departure, then tested again on arrival in China and then released into a bubble that is hermetically sealed as far as possible. But I would assume that food still has to be brought in and rubbish has to go out. How exactly this is organized is not transparent. But what happens if there is an outbreak there is how big it will be. Then succeedsto isolate a cluster or individual patients, or will it spread in the bubble? That is, of course, the scenario that the Chinese government wants to prevent like hell. "
South Korea actually opened at the beginning of November, but reintroduced the old contact restrictions and restrictions in December - initially because of the steep rise in delta cases.
In the meantime, however, more than 1,300 Omicron cases have been counted.
Katharina Graça Peters, SPIEGEL correspondent
“The government has said that they want to use the contact restrictions that they have now reintroduced to arm themselves for Omikron so that they can now continue to promote the booster vaccination campaign. You can only meet up to four people. You can still go to the restaurant or the café, but they close at 9 p.m. Up until now, when someone is infected, they have come to a special hotel, a Covid hotel, and receive treatment there. That has changed since the beginning of December because the hospitals were overloaded and people who have coronavirus at home, who are not seriously ill now, first receive a package containing protective masks, a clinical thermometer, but also an oxygen meter. And twice a day you have to give your status.Of course, these concerns about data protection and privacy always come into play. But that discussion didn't exist here in South Korea. You feel more secure. "
“Koreans are simply aware of crises. In crises you stand together and you stick to the rules and that's why people here all wear masks. So we are also obliged to wear masks outside. And there is no big discussion about it and there is no big argument about it either. "
“We started the vaccination campaign relatively late here in Korea, but now over 90 percent of the population are double vaccinated and the booster campaign is already in full swing here, and like me the South Korean government - or the Koreans and the authorities here in general - know, will they already have some efficient plan in their pocket as to how things will proceed when Omikron becomes dominant here.
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Due to the high number of infections, the omicron variant could make a decisive contribution from the pandemic to an endemic state by inducing basic immunity in the population.
However, high numbers of infections can still lead to high numbers of victims.
And to significantly more people who continue to suffer from the consequences for a long time after an infection.
