The corona numbers are increasing, the intensive care units are getting fuller and fuller. Clinics are already complaining about the high burden. How will it be in winter? German researchers are now investigating this question.
The autumn wave has begun. The number of infections in Germany is increasing. The clinics fear that the intensive care units will be overloaded. The big question that is in the room: What will the situation be like in winter?
It is precisely this question that members of the “Modeling Network for Serious Infectious Diseases” are now addressing. This is an association of experts from various universities in Germany, whose results are coordinated by the University Medicine Halle. The teams now jointly presented three scenarios for the Corona winter based on their respective simulations.
The scenarios differ
new virus variants.
“This enabled assessments to be made of the potential occurrence of infection, the burden on hospitals and the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns,” write the researchers. In total, they used seven different models from which they derived the scenarios.
Happens:
These are the consequences:
“Only in simulations that assume a very high impact of seasonality in connection with a relatively high weakening of the immunity existing in the population does this scenario turn out to be less favourable,” write the researchers. Nevertheless, it must be noted that with an overall high incidence, relevant staff shortages can occur, especially in the health sector or in other areas of critical infrastructure.
Happens:
These are the consequences:
Happens:
These are the consequences:
However, as the researchers emphasize, the probability of occurrence is not known or can be derived for any of the scenarios. So they cannot say which scenario is most likely to occur.
As a result of previous vaccination campaigns and the previous infection process, large parts of the population have been fundamentally immunized against the corona virus, the researchers summarize. “We therefore assume relatively good protection against a severe course of a corona infection with the variants currently widespread in Germany,” says Alexander Kuhlmann, head of the coordination office of the modeling network at the University Medicine Halle. “Should a new virus variant appear that partially circumvents the acquired immune protection of the population, the situation could worsen.” This could already be observed in the course of 2022, when various subvariants of the omicron variant triggered several waves of infection.
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In the third scenario in particular, however, it is possible that changes to the vaccination strategy alone are not sufficient to keep hospital occupancy rates below the previous peak values. “More concrete statements about the expected risk and possible countermeasures are only possible when a new virus variant actually prevails and we have data on the dynamics of the spread and the risk of serious illnesses,” says Kuhlmann.
