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Charité virologist Christian Drosten: "Everyone should check whether they can consciously limit their own contacts again for a few weeks"
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO
Because of the large number of unvaccinated people and the slow booster campaign, according to the director of the Institute for Virology at the Berlin Charité, Christian Drosten, Germany is "still miles away" from the end of the pandemic. "As soon as Delta strikes here, the hospitals are quickly overloaded," Drosten told SPIEGEL. In countries with a high vaccination rate such as Spain or Portugal, on the other hand, “the pandemic will probably be left behind for good in the spring”.
Only when the immunity in the population is so great that there are only regionally limited outbreaks that do not overload the health system, one speaks of an endemic in science.
"We have to maneuver slowly and carefully into the endemic phase without our health system collapsing due to excessive demands and deaths like in Great Britain," said Drosten.
But now you have to "react as quickly as possible".
Drosten recommended three measures to contain the wave of infections:
Shutdowns
Boosters
Close vaccine picking
"From a scientific point of view, contact restrictions are urgently required in order to suppress the really shocking incidence," the virologist told SPIEGEL.
One must "now do everything possible to close the million-fold vaccination gap in the adult population" in order to get out of the pandemic faster, explained Drosten.
Ultimately, there could be new virus variants, "against which we would have to completely re-inoculate - especially if we are not yet in the endemic phase."
"Everyone should check whether you can consciously limit your own contacts again for a few weeks," said Drosten in SPIEGEL.
»The self-reliant commitment of the citizens has already bailed us out in the previous waves.
I hope that we can do that again. "
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