Status: 03.02.2022 3:00 p.m
The omicron wave in Germany could have reached its peak between the end of February and the beginning of March – and without the health system being overloaded.
That comes from a current publication by researchers from the Humboldt University (HU) Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). The study also confirms the great importance of vaccinations for the further course of the pandemic.
The number of daily new infections could increase significantly up to the peak of the omicron wave. This is also evident from the researchers’ model calculations. On average, around 300,000 people could become newly infected every day in the coming weeks. In other scenarios, the value could rise to 500,000 or even 800,000 new infections per day. Other calculations see values of 55,000 to 180,000 new corona infections per day.
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The fact that the results of the calculation models differ so greatly is because they involve assumptions about many factors that are not precisely known: how quickly omicron spreads from one infected person to the next, how people have reduced their contacts over time and how effectively a booster vaccination protects against a corona infection.
The researchers emphasize that the whole thing is not a forecast of how the corona pandemic will develop in Germany, but rather different scenarios that were outlined under certain assumptions. A total of 180 different scenarios were considered. The graphic above shows what follows from this on average for the incidence values: In all models, the researchers come to the conclusion that the omicron wave could reach its peak in mid-February to early March.
Dark figure: True number of cases estimated to be around twice as high
The researchers’ models only deal with the officially reported corona cases. The authors of the report assume that the number of unreported cases is around 50 percent, which means that the true number of new infections could be about twice as high.
Overloading of the intensive care units is not expected
The researchers have not only calculated when and how the number of corona cases could reach their preliminary peak, but also how the situation in the hospitals and especially the intensive care units could develop depending on this. And their results give hope, because in the vast majority of scenarios, the expected omicron peak will not overload the intensive care units or the hospitals as a whole.
Based on the information available to date, the researchers assume that the risk of being admitted to the hospital with or because of an omicron infection is around a third as high as with an infection with the delta variant.
They see the risk of going to the intensive care unit with Omikron at around one tenth compared to Delta. Assuming this, it could be that in the second half of February 2,000 people will be admitted to the hospital every day with or because of Corona. In most scenarios, however, the occupancy of the intensive care units will not reach the high level of December 2021.
Clear effect of contact reductions in models
The researchers also simulated which political measures could be used to influence the omicron wave: A long, weak contact reduction would significantly weaken the peak, by around a third of the cases. A short, weak contact reduction would also break the omicron wave and flatten the infection curve. A short, sharp reduction in contact in early January could have led to an even stronger wave in February.
Thought experiment: First vaccinations help massively
In a kind of thought experiment, the authors of the report also simulated what effect it would have on the further course of the pandemic if 15 million people had received an additional first vaccination in January. The report states: “A hypothetically higher number of first-time immunizations (…) would in turn greatly reduce the risk of intensive care units being subjected to maximum stress.”
However, the researchers do not want to derive political recommendations from their models. They also point out the limitations of the calculations. Among other things, this is due to the number of unreported cases among those infected and those who have recovered, the effect of the vaccines at Omikron and other effects such as the upcoming change in the test strategy. The models refer to the omicron variant B.1, information about the dominant variant B.2 in Denmark was not considered.
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