Again, more people have to go to the hospital because of Corona than a few weeks ago. Such is the situation in Great Britain. It was often a “glimpse into the Corona future” for Germany. FOCUS Online illustrates the numbers and explains what they mean to us.
Since the beginning of June, the number of new infections has been increasing again. In Great Britain, hospital admissions increased again almost simultaneously – although they are nowhere near the level of the previous omicron waves. The new corona variants BA.4 and BA.5 are now in circulation and are spreading rapidly. To what extent can the scenario from Great Britain be transferred to Germany? A warning sign? That’s what the experts say.
In fact, it is worth taking a look at other countries and the corona situation there. “Great Britain and other countries registered earlier than Germany that the infection process was taken over by the sub-variant BA.5,” explains Timo Ulrichs, infection epidemiologist from the Akkon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, at the request of FOCUS Online. “With the build-up of a summer wave, hospital admissions will also increase there with a time lag, and deaths will increase at a further time interval. There is no reason why this development could not be expected in Germany.”
Timo Ulrichs is a specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiologist. He works at the Institute for Global Health as a program director for international emergency and disaster relief. He also worked as a consultant at the Federal Ministry of Health, where he was responsible, among other things, for epidemic protection and influenza pandemic planning.
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Regarding the situation in Germany: the trend is clear. On a 7-day average, Germany is even ahead of Great Britain. “However, this corresponds neither to what many citizens experience in their environment nor to what colleagues from the health sector in Great Britain report,” warns Ralf Reintjes, epidemiologist at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “According to British studies, the current rate of infection there is at a similarly high level as at the peak last winter.”
Ralf Reintjes is Professor of Epidemiology and Health Reporting at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. His focus is on the investigation of infectious diseases, expertise in surveillance and pandemic preparedness at national and international level (especially Europe, Asia and Africa).
According to previous data, the two variants BA.4 and BA.5, which are now also becoming dominant in Germany, are “unfortunately very contagious,” judged the virologist Friedemann Weber. It is therefore quite possible that the current increase will continue for a while and also lead to an increase in deaths. Reintjes speaks of a large-scale infection that is currently underway, although summertime is actually the time of year when respiratory viruses spread less well than at other times of the year. !function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if (“string”==typeof t.data
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“We are already seeing a regional increase in hospitalization rates,” says epidemiologist Ulrichs. BA.5 and BA.4 were also preparing to become the dominant variants for us. “Against this background, it is completely incomprehensible why the federal government only wants to bring the legal framework into the Bundestag after the summer break in September – and only then wants to start another vaccination campaign.” Other countries have already reintroduced the wearing of masks.
Early evidence suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 may again target deeper lung tissue and not just the upper airways. Weber estimates that they are “possibly more pathogenic” than the previous omicron variants, lung specialist Cihan Çelik from the Darmstadt Clinic tweeted last week: “Current impression of the normal Covid ward (not representative): beds are filling up again and the burden of the disease is increasing significantly. Almost all patients here need oxygen, which had become rare four weeks ago.”
Virologist Ulf Dittmer from the University Hospital Essen sees it differently: “So far I have not seen any convincing data that BA.4/5 are more pathogenic than BA.1/2 were. There is no evidence of this in Essen either.
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In Great Britain, the increasing numbers of new infections and new hospital admissions are not yet noticeable in the intensive care units.
On the situation in Germany: In this country there are a few more people in intensive care than two weeks ago. The current omicron subvariants are even better at evading the immune system than BA.1 and BA.2 and are more infectious. As a result, we saw another wave in many countries, including Germany, explains Dittmer. The virologist adds: “Unfortunately, with waves like this, there are always a few patients who end up back in the intensive care unit. Not infrequently with Sars-CoV-2 as an additional finding and another serious illness.”
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On the situation in Germany: Both Weber and Ulrichs expect, however, that the current increase in the summer wave will be followed by an increase in deaths. The latter therefore criticizes the hesitation of politicians. Because “it is true that at the beginning of a pandemic wave, slight measures are sufficient to effectively flatten it out,” explains Ulrichs. “Once the wave is in strong growth, the easy measures are no longer sufficient and much more resources must be mobilized to mitigate the effects of this wave.”
Epidemiologist Reintjes sees the situation as a clear warning signal for Germany. “If we go into autumn with such a high infection pressure from an extremely large number of infected people in the population with a constantly changing virus, we can expect even higher numbers of infections and illnesses in autumn and winter,” warns the expert.
He sees a particular danger in the changed test strategy. Official figures will probably reflect what is happening even more imprecisely, since testing is currently being significantly reduced and citizens are demotivated to have themselves tested by additional payments for the tests. “It is very likely that we citizens will find out more about it in our environment through even more illnesses in family and friends and further absences at work,” says Reintjes. The societal cost would likely continue to rise, likely much higher than the cost of testing.