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Minister is against easing
Lauterbach: “We have the omicron wave under control”
01/28/2022 11:24 am
How does the land get through the omicron wave? Minister of Health Lauterbach draws a fundamentally positive interim conclusion. Now it must be a matter of protecting older people and risk groups in particular. In the eyes of RKI boss Wieler, the burden of disease is now of particular importance.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach has drawn a positive interim conclusion for combating the current corona wave in Germany. “We have the Omicron wave well under control,” said the SPD politician before the federal press conference. In his joint appearance with the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, and the intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis, the minister emphasized that the task now must be to minimize the consequences of the virus wave, especially in older parts of society to keep.
Although the infection with Omikron is generally milder than in the case of the Delta variant, according to Lauterbach, it must be assumed that as the number of infections increases, many unvaccinated older people will become seriously ill. He pointed out that Germany has the second oldest population in Europe after Italy and a comparatively low vaccination rate among older people. Compared to England, for example, four times as many older people are unvaccinated in this country. The “vaccination gap” for over 60-year-olds is twelve percent, said the minister. In this context, he again advocated the introduction of a general obligation to vaccinate. At the moment, however, the main thing is to protect the older unvaccinated people so that the sick do not end up in the intensive care units.
Wieler made a similar statement. “The sum of the case numbers is no longer the decisive factor,” said the RKI boss. He pointed out that in the current phase of the pandemic, the burden of disease is of particular importance. With the number of infections currently increasing, the number of serious cases of illness is still relatively low, but at the same time the number of admissions to hospitals is increasing again. “We’re gaining time every day,” said Wieler, referring to additional vaccinations.
Wieler pointed out that in the past seven days alone, one percent of the population – a total of 890,000 people – had been infected with the corona virus. “We are heading towards a peak in the omicron wave,” he said. The particularly endangered population group of older people is currently “not so much” affected by the wave. “But we have to expect more hospital admissions just because of the sheer number of infected people.”
Karagiannidis: “Covid not just a lung disease”
In view of the rapidly increasing number of infections, the intensive care physician Karagiannidis is now observing a clear “omicron effect” in the intensive care units. Although the hospitalization rate is currently still “acceptable”, the high incidences are also increasingly evident in hospitals, said the scientific director of the DIVI intensive care register. For about seven to ten days, there has been a “sideways movement in new admissions, towards a trend that is now slightly up again”.
Karagiannidis also said that the most important questions that arose were about the burden of the disease with the omicron variant, about the main diagnosis that brought the patient to the hospital and “how many of them really have a respiratory problem, So pneumonia?” The expert referred to the so-called syndromic monitoring of the RKI, through which one knows how many patients with respiratory diseases one has. The proportion of those who are ventilated is extremely high. According to Karagiannidis, the proportion of those who do not need to be ventilated is currently 20 percent.
The intensive care doctor also warned: “We should not forget that Covid is not just a lung disease, but a systemic disease that affects the vessels in particular.” In the near future you have to pay very close attention to the proportion of those who do not need respiratory support. Karagiannidis warned that one must prepare as best as possible for the coming winter. “I’m more afraid of the coming winter than this one.” But he was “in good spirits” that this would succeed with Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach and RKI boss Wieler.
Lauterbach: “I do not welcome the easing”
When asked by a journalist, Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach spoke out against relaxing the protective measures in view of the high number of cases and incidence values. “I don’t welcome the easing,” said Lauterbach, with a view to Bavaria, where more visitors will be allowed to attend major sporting and cultural events in the future, but also with regard to the withdrawal of numerous corona rules in countries such as Denmark.
According to Lauterbach, the aim of the current corona policy is to get through the omicron wave with as few deaths and severe courses as possible. He expects their zenith in mid-February with possibly 400,000 corona infections per day.
Lauterbach advised against waiting now for vaccines adapted to the omicron variant. The “old vaccines” from the manufacturers Moderna and Biontech/Pfizer “drastically” protected against death from Covid disease and reduced the risk of death by 99 percent. “We have the omicron wave now“, said Lauterbach and thus called for a timely booster vaccination. “Booster vaccinations definitely help older people.”
After criticism of the shortening of the convalescent status by the RKI had been raised in the past few days, Lauterbach defended the decision again. He was also not privy to this, he did not know anything about the draft resolution in advance. Opposition politicians, especially from the Union, had warned that such far-reaching decisions should not be made under political pressure from the Ministry of Health. The RKI is subordinate to the ministry. The recovered status had recently been reduced from 180 days to 90 days. At the same time, Lauterbach promised that changes of this kind, which would happen “more frequently”, would be better communicated in the future.