“Coronavirus Update”
“Brake again in the fall” – this is how Sandra Ciesek and Christian Drosten evaluate the corona situation in the last podcast episode
Became sought-after discussion partners thanks to the podcast “The Corona Virus Update”: the scientists Sandra Ciesek and Christian Drosten
© Frank Rumpenhorst / DPA
For many, he is probably the best-known German corona expert – also thanks to his podcast “The Corona Virus Update”. Now the virologist Christian Drosten is putting an end to it for the time being. Together with his colleague Sandra Ciesek, he looks again at the pandemic situation in a final episode.
More than 100 episodes, around 135 million views, countless studies, explanations, warnings, reassurances – the podcast “The Coronavirus Update” has been accompanying many people for more than two years of the pandemic. Yesterday, the virologists Sandra Ciesek and Christian Drosten could be heard for the last time in a regular episode on NDR-Info. The scientists from the University Hospital Frankfurt am Main and from the Charité in Berlin, who last took turns in the format, spoke about the current corona situation, the biggest surprises of the pandemic – and their role in public.
“The numbers will certainly remain relatively high at least until the Easter holidays or a week or two after that,” said Drosten with a view to the current infection process. At present, one is benefiting from the main effect of the vaccination and from the alleviation of the severity of the disease in Omicron. “We can already say that the situation has improved significantly as a result. But it has not been completely resolved.”
You can see a linear increase in hospital admissions and a shift to older age groups, explained Drosten. That’s why he assumes that the intensive care units will soon fill up more and there will be more deaths – possibly by around mid-May. The Frankfurt virologist Ciesek added that if the number of infections rose again, as is currently the case, it was “of course bad if you then lifted additional measures and thus boosted it”.
She expressly recommended continuing to wear masks – for example in tight situations, in poorly ventilated indoor areas and on local public transport. “All risk patients should definitely continue to wear a mask for themselves if not everyone else does it,” advised Drosten. It is possible that at some point, with a falling incidence and a lack of requirements, there will be “Asian courtesy” when wearing masks.
The podcast is over for now. It’s not Corona
The podcast team does not want the exit of Drosten and Ciesek to be understood as a sign of the end of the pandemic, as has recently been repeatedly emphasized. Science has played its part and initially there is not much left to say, now it is the turn of politics, it was said. In the last issue, Drosten made it clear again that he expects the virus to continue to develop. So it is now coming back to China and can hardly be controlled given the large population there. “This creates enormous evolutionary opportunities for the virus,” he explained.
With a view to the coming autumn, Drosten expects a stronger transmission again. He warned that he did not think that the infection process could simply be “let it go”. “Maybe that’s the last fall, where you have to slow down again.”
“The Coronavirus Update” began at the end of February 2020 – at a time of great uncertainty. From then on, the podcast served many people as an important source of information and a kind of guide in the dynamic and sometimes very complicated infection process. The award-winning format reflected the constantly changing knowledge. Drosten and Ciesek addressed the central questions – how to fight the virus, how to understand complex studies, what measures are necessary. The result: Individual episodes could sometimes be over two hours long.
Drosten on the corona virus: “Permanent amazement”
What has surprised the experts most in two years of pandemic? Drosten and Ciesek were both amazed at how quickly the virus was changing and at the speed at which the different virus variants had replaced each other, they said in the last episode. “It’s actually such a permanent amazement,” said Drosten, describing his feelings.
In public, he in particular was often perceived as a warning, but he also cautiously gave the all-clear in some cases and repeatedly emphasized that people also had the course of the pandemic in their own hands. The downside of the enormous public presence: For some critics of the measures, Drosten in particular became an enemy. Drosten described that he was sometimes approached on the open road. At the moment, however, he has the feeling that the attention around him is normalizing – and that’s a good thing. “I think it’s never a good thing when a person is identified for a topic because that simply doesn’t correspond to reality.”
Now they wanted to focus on their research fields again, explained Drosten and Ciesek. The podcast should initially continue without her: According to NDR, special episodes are planned next. It was also said that the two virologists would remain as interlocutors in the event of important current developments.