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Photo: Julia Steinigeweg / DER SPIEGEL
SPIEGEL:
Professor Drosten, the pandemic has entered a decisive phase.
The start of the vaccination campaigns gives hope for an end to the state of emergency - but now more contagious virus mutants have emerged.
How dangerous is the situation in Germany at the moment?
Drosten:
Of course I'm watching that carefully.
It is also clear to politicians that you have to be careful now.
At the beginning, I admittedly had a little doubt that B.1.1.7, the new variant from Great Britain, is actually as much more contagious as was claimed.
But now there's a new study out of Oxford, really solid data showing that this mutant is up to 35 percent more infectious than the wild type of the virus.
It is amazing that the virus has become so infectious.
Unfortunately that is more dangerous than if it had become more deadly;
Because each new infected person will infect more people and each of these people in turn will infect more people, so that the number of infected people will grow exponentially.
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