After statements by virologist Christian Drosten about an end to the corona pandemic, Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann spoke out in favor of phasing out all protective measures. “Christian Drosten was one of the most cautious scientists during the pandemic,” wrote the FDP politician on Twitter on Monday. “Now his finding is: The pandemic is over. We are in an endemic state. As a political consequence, we should end the last corona protection measures,” says Buschmann.
In the federal states, which themselves determine corona protection measures such as compulsory isolation and mask rules in local public transport, different requirements for combating the pandemic still apply.
Drosten, head of virology at the Berlin University Hospital Charité, had the daily mirror said that Germany is experiencing the first endemic wave with Sars-CoV-2 this winter, “in my opinion the pandemic is over”. After this winter, the immunity of the population will be so broad and resilient that the virus will hardly be able to get through in the summer. The only restriction the virologist named was another mutational leap. “But I don’t expect that anymore at the moment.”
“I expect that the pandemic will now increasingly come to an end,” said intensive care doctor Karagiannidis
The intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis, who is also a member of the Federal Government’s Corona Expert Council, made a similar statement. He had in an interview with editorial network in Germany (RND) answered in the affirmative whether the pandemic would be over after the winter. “I expect that the pandemic will now be phased out,” said Karagiannidis. Certainly there will still be one or the other small wave. However, the immunity situation of the population is solid and there are significantly fewer Covid patients in the intensive care units.
Several experts, such as the chairman of the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko), Thomas Mertens, share the assessment that Corona is now an endemic. In his view, a pandemic is primarily defined by the fact that a globally unknown pathogen with which people have no immunological experience breaks into the population. That is no longer the case, Mertens said at the end of October.