Today, Friday, the Prime Ministers of the federal states want to discuss new measures to combat Covid-19 with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It should also be about shortening the quarantine times. And so Corona was also the main topic for Markus Lanz on ZDF.
Today we are learning two new words that we will come across again and again over the next few weeks – one of them this Friday. This is the CT value. Along with various other values, this is measured in a PCR test. Usually the test shows whether you have corona viruses in your breathing space or not. However, it does not show how many viruses are present.
But now it can be that you have so few viruses that you can no longer infect anyone. You can measure that with the CT value. At a value of around 30, the scientists assume that someone with a coronavirus can no longer infect anyone. The Prime Minister’s Conference now wants to decide that a corona quarantine can also be ended with a positive test result if the CT value is below 30. This could potentially cut the quarantine times in half for patients with booster vaccinations. Virologist Hendrik Streeck explained it similarly to Markus Lanz on ZDF on Thursday evening.
The second word is even easier to understand: endemic. We are currently in a pandemic in the case of Corona, the virus is raging all over the world. If the virus is endemic, it still exists, but only in certain parts of the world. One also speaks of an endemic when the waves of infection continue to flatten out in the case of a disease such as Covid-19, i.e. fewer and fewer people are infected. And that’s what scientists like Hendrik Streeck hope for this year.
“Not the whole class in quarantine”
Today’s suggestions at the MPK could be interesting for schoolchildren. The Education Ministers’ Conference unanimously decided on Wednesday to keep classroom teaching in schools, says Schleswig-Holstein Education Minister Karin Prien from the CDU at Lanz. Here, too, the quarantine rules should change, says Streeck. With an infected student, the whole class doesn’t have to stay at home, he says. According to one study, children are not infected with the Omicron variant as often as adults. In addition, tests are carried out in schools every other day, and even daily in Berlin. In addition, the students would have to wear masks, the classrooms would often be ventilated. Streeck particularly advocates ventilation and draft in the classrooms. Even aerosol researchers are controversial about what the frequently invoked air filters would do.
“Hospitals have to adapt”
Omikron spreads quickly, but is less dangerous, says Streeck, summarizing the current research. “Germany is lucky that we are ahead of this wave. We took measures in good time, and that is why there will not be as high an increase here as in other countries,” says Streeck with certainty. In England the number of patients who have to be treated in hospitals has fallen by 30 percent, in Denmark by as much as 50 percent. In addition, there are significantly fewer patients in the intensive care units.
What that means? “We have to prepare ourselves that the intensive care units may no longer be our bottleneck and we have to prepare ourselves that we will see an increase in patient numbers in the normal wards.” This would mean new tasks for these wards, because more isolation beds and single rooms would have to be provided there. “This is all good news,” said the scientist. Nevertheless, we would have to adapt to the new variant, especially the critical infrastructures.
Streeck thinks the proposal by the Ministry of Health and the Robert Koch Institute for the Prime Minister’s Conference on the shortened quarantine times is good. This is especially true for people who work in the critical infrastructure and who can test themselves after five days to go back to work when they are fit. At the same time, he praised the fact that the CT value should also be included in the examinations.
“The transition from pandemic to endemic is creeping”
Streeck sees a particular problem in the fact that there are no plans how we can get from the pandemic to the endemic. It is not even clear when we can talk about an endemic situation. “It will be a gradual transition,” he says. “We’re going to have a drop in the number of infections in the spring and then the hard work begins.” Then the health system would have to be made crisis-proof, but above all one would have to start a new vaccination campaign. Streeck hopes that there will then also be a vaccine that protects against the omicron variant.
However, Streeck speaks out against compulsory vaccination. It only makes sense if it can be used to eradicate a virus. However, this is not possible with Corona. His suggestion: “We should rather advertise booster vaccinations with older people and high-risk patients in autumn and winter with a vaccination campaign.”