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Drosten statement: The good news about the end of the pandemic and a big but

2022-12-27T14:56:01.552Z


Germany's best-known virologist sees the end of the corona pandemic in the country. As gratifying as that is: Even in this phase, many people become seriously ill.


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Shopping street in Düsseldorf in December: is it still a pandemic?

Photo: IMAGO/Michael Gstettenbauer

"I just don't think you wake up on Tuesday and then it's over," said Jeremy Farrar, Director of Britain's Wellcome Trust in early February 2022. Almost eleven months later, millions of news consumers woke up from their Christmas coma that Tuesday, and that's exactly what seemed to have happened to be.

A day earlier, Christian Drosten from the Charité in Berlin had told the “Tagesspiegel” that he believed the pandemic was over.

Media reported nationwide.

There are already initial attempts by politicians to lift all protective measures.

And yet Farrar is right.

"Transitioning from the acute phase of the pandemic to something new is really difficult," he said earlier this year.

This is bumpy and varies around the world.

The outbreak of the corona virus is still a pandemic in the eyes of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The virus is still causing a sensation around the world, currently in China, for example.

In any case, the situation in Germany alone does not determine whether this state of affairs, which has been proclaimed worldwide, will end or continue.

In this sense, Covid-19 remains a pandemic.

With his statement, however, Drosten wants to express that the spread pattern in Germany has changed significantly compared to the beginning of the outbreak.

The limits of the pandemic

The problem in the debate: there is no end to the pandemic, the transition is fluid.

In an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND), intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis formulated a little more cautiously than Drosten: "I expect that the pandemic will now increasingly come to an end." Certainly there will still be one or the other small wave, but the immunity level of the population is solid, and there are significantly fewer Covid 19 patients in the intensive care units.

The terms pandemic and endemic can be roughly distinguished from one another as follows: In a pandemic, the population is largely defenseless against a pathogen.

If no countermeasures are taken, it quickly works its way through the entire population - with a corresponding number of deaths and long-term illnesses in a short time.

Endemic, widespread and deadly at the same time

On the other hand, it is characteristic of an endemic that a pathogen occurs regionally continuously, but due to a high level of immunity in the population through vaccinations and past infections, it can no longer infect quite as many people at the same time as during the pandemic.

The endemic occurrence of a pathogen is therefore not quite as threatening as a pandemic, but it is not necessarily harmless.

The evolutionary biologist Aris Katzourakis from the University of Oxford explained in January that an endemic disease can be fatal and referred to 600,000 malaria deaths in 2020. He also said: Endemic infections could still make waves.

This is also reflected in Drosten's current statements: "We are experiencing the first endemic wave of Sars-CoV-2 this winter," he said in advance of his declaration of the end of the pandemic.

At the end of November he had already told the "ZEIT" that the rapid succession of many smaller corona waves this year were "a sign of the coming end of the pandemic".

In the end, Covid-19 is about a balance between pathogens and population immunity.

Every year - in future probably especially in autumn and winter - part of the population becomes infected and is protected again for the time being, while the immunity of the rest continues to decrease until they become infected and thus build up new immune protection.

In other words, the virus continues to circulate endemic, albeit not quite as violently, and Long Covid also remains an issue.

Regular booster vaccinations, especially for those who are at high risk, could continue to make sense in the future to improve the immunity of the population.

Overloaded clinics due to endemic pathogens

The current situation in German clinics during a simultaneous wave of influenza, RSV and corona shows the problems that endemic pathogens can lead to.

For example, the Charité is in emergency operation, Drosten told the “Tagesspiegel”.

And uses an example to explain the difference between a pandemic and an endemic.

There is no pandemic risk, the overload will not continue to multiply, as in the pandemic, said Drosten.

Nevertheless, the situation is serious.

It will take "an agonizingly long time" for the overload to be over because so many different pathogens are circulating.

"One goes down, the other comes up again."

Against this background, the calls for a quick relaxation of infection protection from politicians, preferably in winter, as a reaction to Drosten's statements, seem poorly thought out, especially since there are hardly any regulations in many places anyway.

"The term 'endemic' has become one of the most misused terms in the context of the pandemic," Katzourakis said months ago.

Vaccination remains the best protection

In endemics, too, the key is to prevent severe disease progression as far as possible.

Vaccination offers the best protection.

Unvaccinated people continue to have a significantly higher risk of becoming seriously ill than vaccinated people.

This is particularly noticeable in people over the age of 60, who are at greater risk overall.

Nevertheless, more than a third of the population in Germany is still missing a booster dose.

After all, in the group aged 60 and over, 85 percent received a third vaccination.

Vaccination is also given against other endemic respiratory pathogens, if an effective vaccine is available.

In the fall, experts called for more vaccinations against the flu.

Experts are also working to improve flu vaccination using mRNA technology used in Covid-19.

Combination vaccines against both endemic pathogens are also an option.

Research is also being carried out on vaccinations that offer reliable protection against infection, i.e. can prevent not only severe but also mild courses.

Who knows, maybe someday someone will wake up on a Tuesday and there will be a vaccine that will definitely protect against Covid-19 endemics.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-12-27

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