How high is the vaccination rate in Germany really? Recently published data doesn’t make too much of a difference for virologist Christian Drosten.
Berlin – In the debate about the precise vaccination quota in Germany, the virologist Christian Drosten defended the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
He does not consider the unilateral assignment of blame to the RKI and Lothar Wieler to be justified, said the expert from the Berlin Charité in the podcast “Coronavirus Update” at NDR-Info. The topic is not new either, the RKI has been pointing out the problem for a long time.
Drosten: excitement “completely free”
According to a report on an RKI vaccination survey that appeared last week, probably more people among adults in this country are vaccinated than the data from the reporting system suggest. It was said that the rate for once and fully vaccinated people aged 18 and over could be up to 5 percentage points higher. As early as August, the RKI reported “a certain degree of uncertainty” in the interpretation of vaccination rate data.
Ultimately, the public excitement about the discrepancy is “completely in vain,” said Drosten. The situation has not changed. “That is just the total bang, what happened there.” You have to reckon with the vaccination rate of the total population (and not the adults), said Drosten Overall situation “irrelevant”. The accompanying study, a survey, also has some limitations.
Open step by step
Drosten also advocated loosening corona protective measures only gradually: “The most important thing is to close the vaccination gaps. And then we open up step by step, one step at a time. ”The quota should be increased“ as high as possible ”.
It was the 100th episode of the podcast. According to NDR, the format is to be continued in the coming weeks with shorter episodes than last. In essence, however, he thinks his project of providing scientific information in this way has been completed since vaccines have become widely available, said Drosten. Science delivered. “The whole thing is now the task of politics.”
From February 2020 on, Drosten had provided information on Sars-CoV-2 in the award-winning format, initially daily. The podcast is now usually published every two weeks. Drosten and the virologist Sandra Ciesek take turns.
The expert from Frankfurt said that the further development of the pandemic in Germany is currently difficult to assess. However, it has often been observed that the number of infections increases again after the school holidays.
Ciesek: Hospitalization incidence inaccurate
Ciesek criticized the so-called hospitalization incidence (Covid-19 new admissions to clinics within seven days) “as the measure of all things”: According to the virologist, the indicator depicts the actual exposure imprecisely in many ways. For example, she advocated taking a closer look at the location of the university hospitals, as they gave priority to Covid 19 patients. Even within individual hospitals, departments are stressed to different degrees. The NDR also reported a major delay in reporting.
Drosten said it was no wonder that the still relatively new reporting requirement was not yet working smoothly – but something like that could not be “improved quickly” either. dpa
