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The next step is a mini shutdown?
(Picture from May 2020)
Photo: Tom Weller / dpa
It almost seems as if the virus cannot harm the virus at the moment: the number of new infections in Germany is constantly increasing, the traffic light map is increasingly turning red to dark red and the reproduction number, or R value for short, has been clearly higher since the beginning of October one.
Each infected person thus infects significantly more than one person, the virus spreads exponentially among the general population (see graphics below).
"Currently the number of new infections doubles every seven to ten days," said Viola Priesemann from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen in a discussion with journalists.
"If the trend continues, we'll have 100,000 new infections a day in three to four weeks."
On Wednesday, the Prime Ministers want to join forces again virtually in the Chancellery to discuss how the situation can be dealt with.
The crucial question is what the rising numbers mean for society and what follows from it.
Priority: Protecting risk groups
Gérard Krause, Head of the Epidemiology Department at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig, is currently neglecting the direct protection of risk groups in the debate.
It is a challenge to protect these people particularly effectively from infection without excluding them from social participation, he told SPIEGEL.
This is precisely why the topic deserves more attention.
For example, one must work towards ensuring that stationary and mobile care services are equipped with sufficient FFP-2 protective masks.
Even in the case of limited capacities in contact person management or the use of rapid tests, these must be focused on those areas in which the risk of severe disease progression is particularly high.
"We have to limit the spread of the virus in the general population and at the same time strengthen direct protection for people who are particularly likely to have severe illnesses," said Krause.
Hygiene rules, keeping your distance, wearing a mask and reducing contacts are still essential.
The debate is about a second shutdown
The debate over the past few days has focused solely on slowing down the virus.
SPD politician Karl Lauterbach brought another shutdown into play at the weekend.
On Wednesday it became known that the federal government plans to shut down public life in the coming weeks.
The background to the debate is that the spread of the virus in numerous regions is getting out of control or has already gotten out of control.
"Our models show that there were relatively few undetected infections in the summer," says expert Priesemann.
She examines the course of the pandemic in mathematical simulations.
In the warm months, the health authorities were able to quickly find chains of infection and send contacts to quarantine.
She considers this to be an important component in protecting risk groups.
This largely made it possible to keep the virus out of the old people's and nursing homes and to reduce the death rate.
Limiting contact tracing to certain areas is not a solution: "We have to track both individual cases and superspreader events and break chains of infection. These cannot be separated, because each undiscovered individual case potentially becomes a larger cluster."
It is the infected unnoticed who are now driving the pandemic.
"We now have two options," said Priesemann.
"Either we approach the stress limit of the hospitals and then shimmy along with permanent restrictions on public life, or we push the numbers down so much with short, strong measures that we can control outbreaks again."
Short-term, strict measures against the wildfire
The first variant has the consequence that people have to restrict themselves significantly more permanently than now.
Everyone has to reduce their contacts by 50 percent in order to achieve a stable number of new infections and thus an R value of around one.
Still, there would be more deaths because it was harder to protect the risk groups.
Priesemann estimates that the capacities of hospitals are somewhere between 20,000 to 100,000 new infections per day in Germany.
The value fluctuates greatly, depending on the age structure of the infected.
The second variant would mean a shutdown.
Lauterbach explicitly promoted a so-called "breakwater shutdown" on Tuesday.
The principle is also known as mini shutdown or circuit breaker.
Circuit breaker is actually a term from electronics and describes a fuse that interrupts a circuit in the event of an overload.
Applied to the corona pandemic, this means using strict, temporary measures to prevent an ever larger wildfire.
This could buy time to contain the spread of the virus.
The exponential growth would be interrupted for a while and the increase in infections would be delayed.
At the same time, it would be hoped that the clear, time limit would keep the economic damage lower compared to a broad shutdown like in the spring.
"The situation is serious"
Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charité in Berlin, recently discussed the concept on Twitter.
His contribution is based on an article previously published on the Internet by British researchers.
You have modeled the effects mini-shutdowns could have.
Their conclusion: the earlier the measures are taken, the more they affect the spread of the disease.
If the number of infections is already rising sharply, they could bring about "the urgently needed interruption" so that other measures - such as contact tracing - can take effect again.
The German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina published a statement on Tuesday that suggests such an approach: "The situation is serious," is the title.
The paper summarizes findings from model calculations, including those from Priesemann.
It all depends on a quick decision
In order to be able to prevent a similar course of the pandemic as in many neighboring countries, clear decisions must now be made and implemented quickly, it says.
The earlier and more consistently this happens, the shorter the restrictions could be.
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The earlier contacts are reduced to a quarter, the faster the 7-day incidence drops below 35 per 100,000 population
Photo: Tina Schwarz / Leopoldina
"In the spring we saw that the number of new infections was roughly halved every week as soon as a shutdown had an effect," said Priesemann.
In other words: "Every time the number of new infections doubles, it takes around an additional week of severe restrictions to halve them again."
A diagram from the Leopoldina statement (above) shows how the number of infections is likely to change, depending on the point in time at which contacts are reduced to a quarter, i.e. by 75 percent.
However, researchers do not yet know which measures have how big an effect.
"Any contact that has not taken place has an effect, regardless of whether people do not meet at school, not at university, not in the office or not in a restaurant," explained Priesemann.
Where restrictions are appropriate and to what extent, politics must also weigh up economic and social aspects.
There is currently a tendency to keep schools open but bars, for example, to close.
Already used regionally
There are already small mini-shutdowns in Germany.
After the local corona outbreak in Berchtesgardener Land, hard corona rules have been in effect there since October 20 and until November 2: citizens are only allowed to leave their apartments with good reason, holiday guests had to leave.
Restaurants are only allowed to offer take-away meals, baths and cable cars are closed, schoolchildren and kindergarten children should only return after the autumn break.
It will take some time to see how well the measures work.
Because it takes several days for symptoms to appear after an infection, the numbers initially continue to rise at the start of a mini-shutdown.
"It takes one to three weeks for the consequences of individual measures to show up in the statistics," explained Priesemann.
It is also unclear how it can be ensured after a mini-shutdown that the situation does not get out of control again, especially if the virus continues to rampant in other European countries.
Epidemiologist Krause doubts that it is possible and expedient to seal off Germany like an island.
"The virus will keep coming back."
After the shutdown would be before the shutdown.
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