The corona numbers are slowly falling – but is the pandemic over with the end of the third wave? Virologist Hendrik Streeck has a clear opinion on this.
The temperatures in Germany are becoming increasingly summery – on Sunday (May 9th) the thermometer scratched the 30-degree mark in many places and people were drawn out into nature. There are also more and more relaxations for people who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus *. That’s why it’s starting to feel like it’s going to be over soon – the pandemic seems to be receding. But as reported by echo24.de *, the virologist Prof. Hendrik Streeck from the Bonn University Hospital has now warned of a fourth wave in autumn.
On Wednesday, Streeck was on the ARD talk show maischberger. the week as a guest. There he was confronted with the question of whether we had now entered the final phase of the pandemic in view of the falling number of infections. Streeck replied evasively. Because, in his opinion, the decline in new corona infections has various reasons.
Fourth corona wave in autumn? Virologist Hendrik Streeck with a tough prognosis
One of them is probably the typical seasonality of the corona viruses. That means – the virus spreads in cold seasons and when the temperatures rise, new infections also decrease. The first wave was therefore in spring 2020, the second in autumn 2020 and now, in spring 2021, Germany will face the third wave. Streeck attributes the fact that this is now even more violent than the past to the unusually cold April, among other things.
The fact that the numbers are currently falling – this trend is due to several factors, according to Streeck. Firstly, the seasonality mentioned above – it is getting warmer and warmer, the virus is no longer spreading as quickly, and secondly, the vaccination campaign, which continues to advance. Meanwhile, as of May 10, 32.3 percent of Germans have been vaccinated against the coronavirus at least once, and 9.1 percent of the total population has even been completely vaccinated.
Fourth corona wave in autumn: are curfews counterproductive?
According to Streeck, the government’s measures with the controversial curfew * are also partly contributing to the drop in the number of infections – but the virologist also sees a difficulty here. He has observed a so-called “lockdown paradox” in poorer neighborhoods, which leads to increased infections – precisely because people are not allowed out. Large families huddled together in narrow apartments and, especially in high-rise buildings, neighbors could easily visit each other during the curfew.
Nevertheless, Streeck is not generally in favor of reopening beer gardens, restaurants and hotels. Instead, the virologist finds model projects like the one in Tübingen * extremely useful to find out whether openings are basically possible without the new infections immediately skyrocketing. In the Baden-Württemberg model city in particular, it has already been seen that careful openings are possible without the number of infections increasing faster than in closed neighboring regions.
Fourth corona wave: how can it still be prevented?
According to Streeck, even more such models are needed – and with them large-scale studies that would then also enable safe openings for the general public. A particularly exciting model project for the virologist is a concert with 5,000 visitors that took place in Great Britain last week. There, vaccinated and unvaccinated people, crowded together, celebrated a huge party without masks – but had to be tested for Corona before and after the event. Streeck thinks that such model projects are needed now.
We don’t know exactly where there is still a risk of infection. There are now vaccinated and tested people at a rave and we need such model projects to find out whether something like this is possible – so what does the new normal look like at the beginning?
So the virologist’s conclusion seems to be that it will take several factors to ultimately defeat the pandemic. But he gave little hope that it could soon be so far. The virologist Hendrik Streeck said at maischberger. The week that there will be pleasantly low infection rates in the summer for the time being, but that there will be another corona wave, the expert was relatively certain. He rather asked himself “how strong a fourth wave will be in autumn.” * Echo24.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
