Experts warn of a violent flu season, provided that the mask requirement for vaccinated people is not overturned. What sounds counterproductive follows medical logic.
Frankfurt am Main – Fighting a dangerous flu season by switching from the mask requirement to mask recommendation does not sound very effective at first. However, that is exactly the topic that occupies medical professionals these days. The Swiss infectious disease specialist Andreas Widmer is now daring to take a step forward.
“It would make sense if only a mask recommendation instead of a mask requirement would apply to vaccinated people in shops and train stations or even in offices,” said the President of the Swiss Center for Infection Prevention to the daily 20 Minuten. Since people no longer come into regular contact with viruses due to the mask requirement, Widmer and some other virologists fear that the immune system cannot get used to them sufficiently.
Infectiologist warns: “I dread winter”
“I dread winter,” Widmer told 20 Minuten. “This build-up of immunity was missing last year because the population was unable to build up an immune defense against flu and cold viruses for a long time because of the mask requirement. The flu can hit back and hit us hard. “
Huldrych Günthard, infectiologist at the University Hospital in Zurich, takes the same line: “If we are unlucky, there is, in addition to the already high level of corona infections, a mega-wave of respiratory infections of all kinds, which had previously been pushed back due to the protective measures and have now become more virulent are ”, he explained to the Neue Züricher Zeitung.
The flu epidemic did not actually take place in Germany last year. The RKI counted a total of 564 reported infections for the 2020/21 season. In the previous year there were 186,000.
RKI warns of flu wave: Hospitals and doctors could be overloaded
The interaction between humans and viruses, an unstable equilibrium, was “disturbed by the pandemic and the measures,” said Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the Frankfurt University Hospital in March in the NDR’s coronavirus update. The frequency of infections was artificially shifted as a result.
In its autumn-winter strategy, the RKI warns that hospitals should be prepared for “increased disease” “also in view of the additional exposure to be expected from acute respiratory infections”. In addition to the main suspect Sars-CoV-2, this also includes the flu and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV for short), one of the typical cold pathogens.
Influenza wave – doctor advises early flu vaccination
Physician Klaus Wahle has a different solution than his Swiss colleague. The professor and spokesman for the flu protection project advised in the Tagesspiegel to get vaccinated against flu at an early stage, as nobody knows how pronounced the next flu wave will be. January is usually the time with the highest levels of influenza infections. Another concern for him is stricter hygiene behavior: “If we manage to combine the two, the next wave of influenza will not worry me. Because then she will not come. “(Lukas Zigo)
