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Syringe with corona vaccine from the manufacturer Pfizer / Biontech
Photo: Friso Gentsch / dpa
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Virologist Ciesek: Antigen tests are an important tool
04.10 a.m.:
From the point of view of the Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek, rapid antigen tests are an important tool in the fight against the coronavirus.
Such tests have two major advantages, said the director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the Frankfurt University Hospital on Tuesday in the NDR podcast "Coronavirus Update": They are faster than PCR tests - "that is, they can react much faster" - and more tests are possible - "that is, you can do a much larger number."
Ciesek went on to say: "This combination makes it a useful tool in certain areas of life, such as in school, to quickly break the chains of infection and prevent it from spreading in school." Rapid tests not only make it possible to quickly identify when someone is infected, "but above all is also infectious (contagious)".
The limits of such tests must therefore be explained well.
Basically, however, the following applies: "Everyone who is correctly recognized counts."
In Austria, all students and teachers are tested twice a week.
That would "certainly have a great effect," said Ciesek.
"There are models that testing twice a week can reduce the number of outbreaks by around 50 percent." But it could also lead to problems.
With so many tests there are also false positive results.
"If this happens frequently, then laypeople can also lose confidence in this test."
Ciesek also sees tests for home use as positive.
But it is "reasonable" that they should be tested "under real-life conditions" before they are put into the hands of laypeople.
Many false positive or false negative results could "in the worst case scenario lead to chaotic conditions."
Which type of test is best suited for laypeople - whether smear from the front nose, saliva or gargle test - "we just don't have any good examinations."
Ciesek expects that everyone tests will be approved in March.
"But that doesn't mean that they'll be on the shelf straight away."
The capacities for PCR laboratory tests are currently not exhausted in Germany.
Ciesek suggests testing people without symptoms again.
"We have to take advantage of this capacity," she demanded.
In her opinion, they would be used sensibly for contact persons after outbreaks, in collective accommodation, for spot checks in schools or on construction sites, ie for "areas where we know that there can be problems".
Free laboratory capacities would also be an opportunity, according to Ciesek, to finally start a so-called surveillance investigation.
For this purpose - as in England, for example - a selected group would be continuously and systematically examined "in order to collect really good data".
That would be helpful, among other things, to be able to evaluate the effects of easing.
Doctors encourage soccer games with fans for study purposes
3:50 a.m.:
Leading intensive care
physicians
want to allow fans again in football stadiums under study conditions and draw insights into the spread of corona at major events.
There are "still no valid data on the risk of infection" at such events, said Christian Karagiannidis, President of the German Society for Internal Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, the "Rheinische Post".
Stadiums would be great for test runs, said the intensive care doctor.
Specifically, he proposes that half of the seats should be released under strict study conditions and hygiene concepts.
People with an elevated temperature or a positive corona test should be excluded beforehand.
The fans would then be divided into different blocks.
"One block of seats receives FFP2 masks throughout, another block the somewhat simpler medical mouth and nose protection," suggests the doctor from the lung clinic in Cologne-Merheim.
After three days, another corona test was carried out on all viewers.
"These results would show how many people were still corona-positive with a negative rapid test, how many only showed an infection after the game and how many may have been infected in the stadium."
According to the doctor's proposal, the study is to be financed by the German Football Association, which has "sufficient funds" and is interested in "letting spectators into stadiums as quickly as possible".
Municipalities are demanding the rapid introduction of digital vaccination records
02.05 a.m.:
The Association of Towns and Municipalities is calling for more speed with the introduction of digital vaccination certificates.
"It can't make sense to convert the current vaccination centers into vaccination registration centers later," says managing director Gerd Landsberg to the newspapers of the "Funke Mediengruppe".
When it comes to the introduction, it does not matter whether such a vaccination certificate is already exempt from certain restrictions, adds Landsberg.
"In the medium term, however, it is very likely that this will happen, as other states such as Israel are already showing."
Commission: Do not follow the sequence for corona vaccinations too rigidly
1:50 a.m.:
The Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) advocates not adhering to the order of the corona vaccinations too rigidly.
In all vaccination centers there should be lists of "whose turn it is when there are doses left over," said Stiko boss Thomas Mertens to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
So that no vaccine is discarded, "suitable candidates from the following priority groups" could be preferred.
The virologist demanded that any remaining vaccine doses should be "handled pragmatically on site."
The transitions between the groups in the vaccination sequence should not be viewed as a "hard boundary".
According to the Stiko boss, many doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are left lying around every day, which is less widely accepted than the active ingredients from Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna, which are also approved.
Merten called the reasons for rejecting the AstraZeneca vaccine "largely irrational".
The vaccine from the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca has met with reservations because its effectiveness in protecting against corona infection is reported to be around 70 percent.
The effectiveness of the products of the Mainz company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer as well as the US company Moderna, on the other hand, is put at well over 90 percent.
However, AstraZeneca argues that its preparation protects "more or less 100 percent from the severe course of the disease."
The Berlin Senator for Social Affairs, Elke Breitenbach (left), announced that some of the remaining AstraZeneca cans should be used to vaccinate the around 3,000 homeless people in the capital's emergency shelters.
"In the current situation it is unacceptable that vaccination doses are lying around unused," she told the Funke newspapers.
The senator wants to start vaccinating the homeless as early as next week.
She hopes that other federal states will follow Berlin's example.
Due to their frequent accommodation in mass shelters, homeless people have so far been given priority level two in the vaccination sequence.
Group one, i.e. those with the highest priority, includes people over the age of 80, residents and staff of nursing homes, as well as employees in intensive care units and emergency services.
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