Hendrik Streeck and Christian Drosten have often disagreed in the past – looking ahead to the Omikron wave, their prognoses are the same. There is optimism.
The Omikron wave is rolling, even if no one knows exactly how strong due to the backward data situation of the RKI. But in new statements, the virologists Christian Drosten and Hendrik Streeck have now been slightly positive.
In his last “heute journal” moderation, Claus Kleber spoke to Drosten about the latest figures from South Africa and England. And the surveys in both countries could be a foresight on the situation in Germany. Both countries have recorded high numbers of infections – but less severe than feared. In South Africa, the number of infections is even decreasing. Drosten calls this development an “endemic situation that is just emerging”. This means that the omicron variant becomes a cold virus. “Like four other variants in the past,” says the head of virology at the Berlin Charité. The virus will then look for immunity gaps and find them in the children who have not yet come into contact with it.
Drosten and Streeck are optimistic about the Corona year 2022
But not only, because Germany still has many unvaccinated adults. This is a “German special problem”, according to Drosten. “We have this large group that we have to worry about and that will certainly have a bit of a say in political action.” He assumes that the situation will have to be “politically moderated” by Easter. For the unvaccinated, a solution must be found, “the booster campaign must be used to counter this”. He assumes that everyone will have to be boosted again in the spring. Unless the virus changes very much in autumn, we would likely have a relatively normal winter 2022 ahead of us.
Drosten’s colleague Hendrik Streeck is just as cautiously optimistic. In the program “RTL Direkt” he declared his hope for a “milder wave” than in other countries. Because Germany had taken “pretty strong measures” in comparison. He does not consider tightening the restrictions to be necessary at the moment. “We first have to wait until we have a better data situation in order to then see how the number of cases develops,” said the director of virology at the University of Bonn. He also predicted a “relaxed summer”.
Source From: Stern
