“It will be precarious for the virus”: Drosten predicts the end of the corona pandemic
Created: 11/23/2022, 6:36 p.m
By: Kathrin Reikowski
According to virologist Christian Drosten, the end of the pandemic is in sight.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa/archive image
Christian Drosten says: “The situation for the virus is becoming precarious.
That's good.” With a few mutations, the virus “can no longer turn the game completely”.
Berlin – Corona virus waves in quick succession that will soon break – for Christian Drosten the current corona dynamics in Germany is the “sign of the coming end of the pandemic.” In an interview with Die
Zeit
, the virologist says: “The situation for the virus is becoming precarious.
It's good.
It's not like the virus could turn the game completely with a few mutations anymore."
Drosten is also optimistic about the further development of the pandemic: According to Drosten, “small influencing factors such as a change in the weather” are now enough to push or break a wave.
A kind of late summer in mid-October immediately brought the numbers down.
The reason for this is that the R-factor has leveled off at 1.
Even without major protective measures, only a few people would currently be infected by infected people.
Corona in Germany: Drosten does not expect strong mutations
With the current situation surrounding Corona in Germany, he does not expect a really nasty surprise in the form of a more dangerous variant of Sars-CoV-2 in the short term: “The virus cannot easily go back at many points in its evolution.” It is a little stuck and am currently just tweaking.
The only thing that worries him is the situation in China.
For a big “revolution”, the virus needs a high number of cases.
And that could soon be the case in China.
“I wouldn't rule out another leap happening there in terms of evolution.
But I don't expect it in the near future," said Drosten.
Drosten sees two scenarios for the winter
For the virologist, the course of the winter also depends on which corona variant will prevail next: “Two omicron variants are starting up right now: BF.7 and BQ.1.1.” Should the omicron derivative BQ.1.1 become dominant "The winter could be difficult again," said Drosten.
The reason for this is that BQ.1.1 has an additional immune escape.
But he also sees the possibility of a gentle winter wave.
He is still in favor of vaccinations, even if people "celebrated" too early after the first approval studies: "Omicron is not mild, that's a big mistake.
The omicron wave was not made so much milder by a less disease-causing virus, but by vaccination.
We saw that in Hong Kong, where there were many, many deaths in an unprotected population in the Omicron BA.1 wave - you had to go in aggressively and stop it immediately," says Drosten.
But even if you get infected with Corona more often in the future, the risk of becoming seriously ill is lower: “When a new virus first encounters an unprotected adult population, there are unpredictable immune reactions, as we see with Long Covid.
With endemic viruses, you get infected for the first time in childhood, so the immune reaction is different.
This will soon also apply to Sars-CoV-2, ”said Drosten.
(dpa/kat)
