Corona summer in Hesse: Expert cautiously optimistic despite the new wave

Created: 06/18/2022, 1:45 p.m

By: Jutta Rippegather

The corona numbers in Hesse are rising again.

What is the situation before the "summer wave" predicted by Lauterbach?

Wiesbaden – The Corona warning app shows permanent red.

In the circle of acquaintances, more and more people are infected.

Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) proclaims the “summer wave” and advises wearing masks in rooms voluntarily.

Hesse's Minister of Social Affairs Kai Klose (Greens) is pushing for a careful and timely change to the Infection Protection Act.

The federal states could not wait until September.

The current legal situation binds their hands.

They would have zero leeway to intervene quickly and in a targeted manner, as in the previous waves.

For example, with a tightening of the obligations to wear a mask or to be tested.

There are still people who negate the virus: “First talks like this again and again,” writes Cihan Çelik in a tweet, he is a senior physician in a normal Covid ward at the Darmstadt Clinic.

"You have pneumonia from Covid-19," says the doctor.

"I don't think so," replies the patient.

Çelik: "On our ward, it's still not a question of faith, but a medical one."

Rising corona numbers in Hesse: hospitalization incidence is 3.1

The number of corona infections in Hesse is increasing, as reported by fr.de.

The seven-day incidence reported by the Robert Koch Institute was 670 per 100,000 inhabitants on Wednesday (June 15), the hospitalization incidence was 3.1.

A week earlier, the value was 1.73.

Current figures from the holiday were not available.

The corona virus keeps producing new subtypes.

© Imago

The disease is usually moderate.

The new variant encounters immune systems that can defend themselves thanks to vaccination or a previous infection.

The situation on the Corona stations is therefore currently relatively relaxed.

"We are currently treating only a few patients with Covid-19 at the Frankfurt University Hospital," says a hospital spokesman for the Frankfurter Rundschau.

The Hesse-wide statistics showed 76 beds in Hessian intensive care units for Wednesday (June 15), 11 a.m., which were occupied by patients with Covid 19 disease.

A week earlier there were 70. Another 68 were confirmed to be infected with Sars-CoV-2, and eight were suspected.

Frankfurt: Current corona wave not “comparable to previous waves”

Sandra Ciesek, Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital in Frankfurt, is cautiously optimistic: the BA.5 corona variant causes more infections than the previously dominant BA.2 variant, she says.

"And if the proportion of BA.5 increases, the number of infections will probably also increase." A similar development can be observed in South Africa and Portugal, where, however, more deaths are also recorded.

"According to the current state of knowledge, one does not have to assume that the wave will be comparable to earlier waves, when neither a corona vaccine nor antiviral drugs were widely available and there was hardly any immunity," says Ciesek of FR.

Based on experience in both countries, it is likely that fewer people would become seriously ill with BA.5.

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Nonetheless, there is no end in sight to the pandemic.

And it is well known that an infection is not guaranteed to be harmless.

Even a mild course can lead to long-term health problems, to long-Covid or post-Covid.

This is easily forgotten when people are now gradually returning to their old lives.

In the clubs, the concert halls, in cinemas and sports facilities.

Not least thanks to the nine-euro ticket, the buses and trains are full again.

Violations of the mask requirement can be observed more and more frequently there.

Mouth and nose protection is also being used less and less in supermarkets.

Possible corona wave in summer: Wearing a mask still helps prevent infection

The piece of fabric is a very simple and effective way to protect yourself and your fellow human beings from possible infections, Hesse's Minister of Social Affairs Klose repeats like a mantra.

He leads by example.

He was spared the fate of the two dozen members of the state parliament who were suspected to have been infected at a reception in Wiesbaden at the end of May: a cross-party super spreader event.

Only the FDP was spared.

(Jutta Rippegather)