According to the epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner, Austria has “arrived” with the omicron wave of epidemic. That’s what the expert from the Danube University Krems said on Wednesday in an interview with Puls24 info boss Corinna Milborn. You have a “relatively uncontrolled events in Austria”. Luckily, however, Omikron is “not very” pathogenic and you can get through this wave “relatively well”. According to Gartlehner, this will not change with the new Omikron variant BA.2. Initial data from Denmark would show that the new variant is twice as infectious as the current omicron variant, but it is not more pathogenic.
Gartlehner thinks that one could therefore wait with the vaccination requirement. “When the vaccination was decided, the situation was very, very different.” The epidemiologist: “By the end of the omicron wave, we will have an immunity in the population that we have never had before.” From the point of view of the expert, another argument against compulsory vaccination is that it is not yet known whether the current vaccination protects against a wave in autumn.
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Gartlehner also questioned the free tests: Anyone who did not comply with the law and would remain unvaccinated would still get free tests from the state to shop or go to the catering trade. “And that alone is contradictory.” There is “no real test strategy”. Everyone tests “how he or she wants it”. According to the expert, this means that the test results are available too late for those who really need it.
Video: Gartlehner is critical of the easing
Omicron variant as “great uncertainty”
For the complexity researcher Peter Klimek recently significantly reduced. However, he described the development of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 as “great uncertainty” in the next few weeks. In the medium term, the population will probably no longer have to remain in “permanent crisis mode”, but politicians will.
BA.2 could create a kind of ripple in the omicron wave, which might stabilize the numbers at a high level for longer, or even raise them again. That’s why we’re currently talking about the “preliminary peak”. The more the subtype is involved in the current infection process, the more likely it is that further developments will be less dramatic. But if that’s not the case, data from Denmark would show that “we still have room for momentum there,” he said Klimekwhich is part of the Covid Forecast Consortium.
Intensive care units: “Hardly anything is happening”
The consortium is now assuming a kind of plateau for new infections. These are therefore expected to remain around the high level of the current week next week. In the normal wards, the occupancy numbers should go up a little further, in the intensive care units “we see that hardly anything is happening,” said the scientist.
In Vienna you can currently see a higher load on the normal wards, but this has not yet reached the previous highs in the pandemic. “If another BA.2 wave follows the BA.1 wave, that won’t make the situation any better.” However, a higher utilization of the normal wards is no longer as dramatic as the sword of Damocles of the fully utilized intensive care wards. It is difficult to say where the load limit lies here in Austria. But it can be quite high because there are relatively many hospital beds in this country.
Danish data also shows that although the number of normal wards there is continuing to increase, the number of Covid 19 patients in intensive care beds is decreasing. To put it simply, Omikron provides more normal coverage there, while the number of people who still came into intensive care through the Delta variant is falling.
Wastewater monitoring instead of tests
Society probably no longer has to remain in permanent crisis mode. “But who we have to keep in crisis mode is politics,” says the scientist. It is clear that one must keep a close eye on the immunization rates and the infection process in the autumn at the latest in order not to get into a difficult situation again with a possible new variant. “We have to somehow keep in touch how much is circulating,” said Klimek. This does not necessarily require the current test system, but the well-developed wastewater monitoring system in Austria, which also allows a look at the emergence of new variants.
If you manage to get a good overview here, “I am confident that you are better equipped for many scenarios”. However, if politicians allow the image to arise again that, according to Omikron, “you don’t have to do anything more in this country anyway, then you can develop a corresponding problem in the autumn”. Klimek: “If you say: ‘It’s no longer socially critical’, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to be managed.”
Source: Nachrichten
