Janosch Dahmen in “Early Start”
“Especially as a doctor, I am very concerned”
06/13/2022, 09:24 am
Will Corona really come back in autumn? The Greens health expert Janosch Dahmen warns of a simultaneous flu and corona wave. In addition, Germany urgently needs to improve its data collection.
Like Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, the health expert of the Greens, Janosch Dahmen, assumes that there could be a dangerous combination of flu and corona waves in autumn. “He absolutely has a legitimate point,” said Dahmen in ntv’s “early start”. “Especially as a doctor, I’m very worried. If we look at the southern hemisphere, where autumn has just started, then we see a really dramatic flu outbreak in Australia, for example, which is spreading there.”
Dahmen said that in Germany one had to expect that influenza viruses could spread parallel to new coronavirus strains “and in combination could simply lead to a large number of respiratory diseases and possibly severe courses and thus also put a heavy strain on our healthcare system”.
In addition to a Covid vaccination, Dahmen also recommended a vaccination against flu viruses: “Only that will help prevent the situation from spreading as much as we are seeing in Australia right now.”
“We have to face the criticism”
Dahmen also asked the federal government for better corona data for autumn and winter. The government’s criticism that not enough has been done to this end is justified: “We can’t duck that, we have to face this criticism.”
With a view to autumn, it is “very crucial” that precise data can be collected on how heavy the burden in the healthcare system is and how many beds are available: “Not only in the intensive care units, but also in the normal wards. There it is crucial to collect relevant data on a daily basis,” says Dahmen. “This must now be prepared at full throttle over the summer so that we have meaningful information about it in the fall.”
In addition, many employees in German health authorities are “burned out”, says Dahmen. Here, too, there must be another “offensive” with the federal states and municipalities: “Of course, we still need up-to-date data in order to be able to control the pandemic management in a really specific and adapted way. It won’t work without that.” Ensuring better data collection is also the task of the next federal-state meetings.