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Sign indicating the corona rules next to the door of a restaurant in Greifswald: Relaxed by the omicron wave?
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Jens Büttner / dpa
On Thursday morning, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported new records – once again: 203,136 new infections within 24 hours.
So many people in Germany have never been infected within one day.
The seven-day incidence now exceeds the thousand mark for the first time.
But despite the rapidly increasing number of infections and the associated growing risk of infection, the mood in parts of the population seems surprisingly relaxed.
This is shown by a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of SPIEGEL.
According to this, around 48 percent of Germans are currently less concerned about corona disease than in the past - because of the often milder course of the disease when infected with the omicron variant.
So far, the number of hospital admissions is lower than expected.
However, according to experts, the omicron wave has not yet reached its peak.
For around 40 percent, Covid-19 disease has not lost its horror even with the currently predominant virus variant.
Read the background to the Civey methodology here.
Younger people in particular express less concern.
Three quarters of the 18 to 29 year olds answered accordingly.
On the other hand, the older people get, the more concerned they are about an illness – after all, the risk of a severe course also increases with age.
In addition, a quarter of Germans are still not vaccinated and a similar proportion of people over 60 are not boosted.
With this vaccination rate, experts keep emphasizing, it would be too early to simply "let the virus run" without restrictive measures.
Germany would currently have to accept high death rates for an infection.
In addition, infection with Omicron does not necessarily mean immunity to other variants of the virus.
Uncertainty about actions
The increasing composure among many Germans also seems to be reflected in the assessment of the measures taken to combat the pandemic.
Around 35 percent rate the current measures as excessive, almost as many consider them insufficient and hardly less appropriate.
The values for the various assessments were not that close to each other.
Over time, the number of those who consider the measures to be insufficient has recently fallen continuously.
At the beginning of December, around two-thirds of Germans still believed that stricter rules were needed in the fight against the virus.
Now it's only a third.
Since then, however, the proportion of people who consider the political measures to be excessive or appropriate has risen significantly – from 20 and 13 percent respectively.
Mfh