In an interview with the APA, Thomas Czypionka, health expert from the Institute for Higher Studies (IHS), pleads to keep your distance in the fight against the virus. At Omikron, both the vaccination and the test are needed to keep the economy open.
This means that vaccinated and recovered people have to be tested regularly. “We have to do everything we can to keep the curve flat and buy ourselves time until the seasonality plays into our hands again in spring,” said Czypionka.
Multiple levels of protection to combat pandemics
It is already clear with the Omikron mutant that it is spreading much faster than the previous variants. There are two reasons for this, said Czypionka. On the one hand it is easier to transmit, on the other hand it bypasses the immune protection, which is why vaccinated and convalescent people are again susceptible to infection. Even if it turns out that there are less severe courses, the high transferability alone threatens to overload the hospitals again.
In order to get through the winter without a new lockdown, each individual must contribute. Similar to several slices of Swiss cheese, fighting a pandemic requires several levels of protection that all together avoid infections. The virtues learned in the first wave – keeping your distance, washing your hands, wearing an FFP2 mask in closed rooms, continuous ventilation, reducing contacts – apply again. This also includes implementing the rules seriously, and not just pro forma. Politicians must use the time until January to convey this.
Expand test infrastructure
According to Czypionka, the assumption that you would be vaccinated and then it would be done was already proven wrong at Delta and is even less applicable to Omikron. With the new virus variant, the vaccination offers significantly less protection against the transmission of the virus to other people, even after the booster dose. Therefore, in addition to vaccination, the PCR tests will gain in importance in order to be able to maintain public life, the expert predicts. It is important now to expand the PCR test infrastructure and prepare 2G-plus.
Even if this does not prevent another lockdown, it means that “every week we win, the lockdown is less long”. From Czypionka’s point of view, a vaccination adapted to Omikron will no longer help this winter. Even in the spring, when the vaccine doses have been produced and delivered, it will take a while for them to be vaccinated in sufficient numbers.
Source: Nachrichten
