Are corona mutations becoming more and more contagious?

Epidemiologist explains how the virus will continue

Created: 05/06/2022, 02:38 p.m

By: Laura May

The virological situation in Germany is currently easing – but the first voices are already warning of mutations in autumn.

Epidemiologist Timo Ulrichs explains how Corona will continue.

Munich – Is the pandemic over now or do we have to adapt to new restrictions and new mutations of the corona virus?

This question worries people all over the world.

While some are already celebrating the return to normality, others see a gloomy autumn coming.

Minister of Health Lauterbach was waiting for a new “killer variant”, other voices will classify Corona as a flu disease in the future.

Coronavirus: are the mutations becoming more and more contagious?

Epidemiologist Timo Ulrichs from the Akkon University of Human Sciences in Berlin answered in an interview

ntv presenter Nele Balgo the following question from a viewer about increasingly contagious virus variants: "How much can this be increased?

Is there a natural limit at some point so that the virus cannot become even more contagious?”

Although the expert cannot answer the question unequivocally, he confirms that there is a limit to the current development.

"Yes, indeed, there are.

After all, the virus can only become more contagious if it changes and adapts to the relevant environmental conditions," he says.

Coronavirus: In South Africa, new omicron variants are already driving the numbers up again

If large amounts of virus circulate, variants would gradually emerge that are fitter than others, explains Ulrichs.

“The others then slowly go away and the new variant prevails.” While the number of infections is currently falling in Germany, a new trend can be observed in South Africa, for example.

There, the two omicron subtypes BA.4 and BA.5 cause many new corona cases.

Experts are not only concerned about the number of infections, but also about the next corona mutation from South Africa.

© IMAGO / MiS

Coronavirus: “Variants cannot always become more contagious”

Epidemiologist Ulrichs can only partially give the all-clear for the fall.

On the one hand, there is a natural finiteness, "because the variants cannot become more and more contagious," he says in an interview.

As far as the other characteristics of the virus are concerned, however, one cannot give the all-clear.

Severe clinical courses and the effects on the human host organism are a different question than the risk of infection.

So it could happen that the virus becomes less contagious, but more dangerous for individual sufferers.

It can happen that "the increased contagiousness combines with an ability in another variant, that more severe courses occur again," says Ulrichs

.