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People stand in front of a test center in Cologne
Photo: Manngold / IMAGO
The holidays have caused a significant distortion of the number of corona cases in Germany.
Once again, the fight against the pandemic in this country has gone blind, among other things, late reports still provide an incomplete picture.
One question that is of the greatest interest at the moment is: How much has Omikron already spread in Germany?
The latest figures from the Robert Koch Institute on the proportion of the variant come from a weekly report from the end of December.
Now the authority has updated the information.
Accordingly, the proportion of the more contagious Corona variant Omikron in the infection process in Germany is increasing rapidly.
In calendar week 52 (until 2.1.), According to reporting data from the federal states ,
44.3 percent
of the corona evidence examined for variants was due to Omikron, as the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) wrote in its weekly report on Thursday.
A week earlier, the value was given as
15.8 percent
.
The count includes both evidence by genetic analysis (whole genome sequencing) and suspected cases based on so-called variant-specific PCR tests.
"Current events in Germany are increasingly determined by the worrying variant Omikron," writes the RKI.
The proportion of the delta variant, which until a few weeks ago almost exclusively dominated the infection process, is steadily decreasing.
The so-called random sample data are more meaningful, even if less up-to-date than the reporting data.
Only complete genome sequences from randomly selected samples are included here.
According to the RKI, the Omikron share in calendar week 51 (until December 26th) was 20 percent compared to 9 percent in the previous week.
This means that Omikron is still on the advance.
The variant was reported from South Africa in November.
According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), it has an unusually high number of mutations in the so-called spike protein, a component of the virus.
Some of the mutations are relevant, for example with a view to transferability, which is particularly high at Omikron.
At the same time, previous data indicate that the variant causes milder disease courses.
In addition, studies have shown that the effectiveness of the vaccines is weakened with Omikron.
Even if there are only a few studies on Omikron and the situation in Germany is only partially comparable with that in other countries, there are increasing voices that assume that Omikron will ease the situation in the medium term.
The idea behind it: Omikron could - but this is only a hypothesis so far - bring an endemic situation closer.
The high level of transferability may mean that the population achieves higher immunity comparatively quickly.
Ideally, the milder courses would take the pressure off the health system - because fewer people have to be treated as inpatients.
A normal winter - without any violent new mutations
"Endemic situation means that this virus becomes a cold virus like many others," said virologist Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité shortly before the turn of the year on ZDF. "Like four other coronaviruses in the past, by the way." It is a good situation when a virus no longer makes you so sick, but is easily transmissible and closes immunity gaps in the population. If the virus does not change significantly over the course of the year, we should have a relatively normal winter, so Drosten - as in times of severe flu waves.
Omikron is much more contagious than any other variant. Based on data from Denmark, South Korea and Great Britain, according to Hajo Zeeb from the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology in Bremen, the mutant can be classified as 2.5 to 3.5 times more infectious than the Delta variant. According to a study from Denmark that has just been published in preprint - i.e. without review by specialist colleagues - Omikron was significantly more transferable in households in which only those who were twice vaccinated or who were only boosted lived, according to Zeeb. This study also shows that those who were boosted had the lowest risk of transmission, those who were not vaccinated the highest.
Initial figures indicate that the incubation period - i.e. the time between infection and the appearance of the first symptoms - could be shorter with Omikron than with other corona variants, as Jörg Timm, head of the Institute for Virology at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, recently in said at a video conference held by the Science Media Center (SMC). A reliable statement is currently not yet possible. However, a shortened incubation period can also lead to an explosive increase in the number of cases. Then problems would be expected for Germany's health system - as well as for other areas of the so-called critical infrastructure, to which, for example, energy and water suppliers or employees in the transport or food industry belong.
There are also differences in the course of an illness caused by Omikron: According to Timm, according to previous knowledge, lung cells cannot be infected with Omikron as well as the cells of the upper respiratory tract, i.e. in the nose and throat. Corresponding results from experiments in the laboratory on cell cultures and in animal models matched the initial information from the clinics. "That means that the severity of the disease has decreased with Omikron," said Timm. However, it does not mean that a disease no longer plays a role. That is not black and white, for example, risk factors of each individual still have to be taken into account.
According to data from the Imperial College at Omikron, the severity of the disease - measured by the proportion of infected people who have to go to hospital - is 20 to 45 percent lower than that of Delta, as Zeeb made clear. It is also interesting with regard to the question of the transition to endemic disease that the risk of hospitalization after an infection or after vaccination is even significantly lower. That speaks for a decreasing severity through immunization, he explained.
However, if the incidence of infection exceeds 1000, a similar number of Covid sufferers could be brought to clinics as in the Delta wave, Andreas Schuppert from the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen made it clear at the SMC conference: "We're talking about numbers that are realistic in Europe."
However, a comparatively mild course does not mean that Covid 19 disease has completely lost its horror.
"Mild does not mean harmless," emphasized Clemens Wendtner, the chief physician for infectious diseases and tropical medicine at the Munich Clinic Schwabing.
He treated the first corona cases in Germany in spring 2020.
So there is still no knowledge about long Covid courses at Omikron.
According to Schuppert, the vaccination breakthroughs at Omikron are quite high. Even boosted people are only protected between 76 to 82 percent. The protection against Delta was around 95 percent. The vaccination protection against severe courses is also high with Omikron.
The experts see the high number of unvaccinated people in Germany as a problem in comparison to other countries.
Around 30 percent of the population are not fully vaccinated, Wendtner made it clear.
In addition, some of the drugs specially developed for Corona no longer worked in the case of an omicron disease.
Drosten said that you are probably not protected against variants such as Delta after an omicron infection.
In addition, none of this means that there will never be other variants again.
He also assumes an increase in the incidence towards next winter.
"The virus is still moving."
joe / wal / dpa
