Omikron in Bremen: Highest incidence despite vaccination record

Bremen has Germany’s highest vaccination rate – and now suddenly also Germany’s highest corona incidence. How can that be?

The city of Bremen has had the highest incidence in Germany for days – according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) it is currently almost 800. And there is no end in sight. Bremen’s health department continues to expect very high numbers of new infections. The small federal state has long been the front runner nationwide when it comes to vaccination rates. How does that fit together?

According to a spokesman for the Senate, the reasons for this are varied. A second or booster vaccination protects against severe disease, but no longer as good against infection with the new Omikron variant.

According to the latest weekly report by the RKI, the new mutation now accounts for 85.5 percent of infections in the state of Bremen. For comparison: In neighboring Lower Saxony it is 66.4 percent, in other city states such as Hamburg (48 percent) and Berlin (58.2 percent) the rate is also lower. In the national average, 44.3 of all new infections are due to Omikron.

Differences between town and country

The health department cites another reason for Bremen’s higher infection rate that people are infected more quickly in metropolitan areas than in rural regions such as neighboring Lower Saxony. The incidences there are currently rising rapidly, especially in the districts of Lower Saxony near Bremen such as Delmenhorst, Osterholz and Verden.

“Omikron is definitely no longer captured,” says epidemiologist Hajo Zeeb from Bremen. Measures such as contact restrictions are at most about slowing down and weakening, Omikron is simply too infectious for anything else.

Proximity to the Netherlands

According to the Bremen health department, it is still not clear why Bremen is hit so hard. Shortly after Christmas, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) mentioned a possible proximity to the border with the Netherlands, which is struggling with high incidences, as a possible reason.

However, epidemiologist Zeeb does not consider Lauterbach’s reasoning that especially border-near federal states are affected by many Omikron infections to be decisive for city-states such as Bremen and Hamburg. In the case of a highly infectious variant such as Omikron, the more decisive factor is that people live closely together in a city.

What role does the Christmas market play?

The Bremen health department neither wants to confirm nor rule out Lauterbach’s hypothesis. However, the authority points out that, unlike in many communities in neighboring Lower Saxony, the Christmas market took place in Bremen. And experience has shown that it is a popular destination for Dutch visitors in the run-up to Christmas, according to the department.

No increase in Covid intensive care patients

Despite the wave of omikron that has been rolling in from the northern federal states since the end of December, there is also reason for hope – also for other federal states. Because the situation in the intensive care units in the state of Bremen has so far been stable. “For several weeks, the number of Covid patients has not moved up or down,” says a spokesman for the health department. And that despite a hospitalization rate of now 13.59. On average in all federal states, the proportion of corona sufferers in weekly hospital admissions per 100,000 inhabitants is currently 3.26.