Corona: High-ranking scientists call for a maximum of ten new infections for Europe

“It’s like a gigantic soccer game,” says Viola Priesemann. The physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization specializes in simulating propagation processes, for example that of pathogens. It has been following the path that the coronavirus is taking around the world for months. “Every time the Virus team scores a goal, they get up to three new players,” says Priesemann. The defense of the other team is thus outnumbered, the virus team scores one goal after another, the number of its players grows and grows.

This is exactly what Germany has experienced in recent months. The gates represent each person newly infected with the corona virus. Anyone who started a chain of infection and inadvertently sent new players with viruses onto the field.

Current score: 33,000+ new infections

The defense of Germany is made up of health authorities, laboratories and AHA-L standards (distance, hygiene, daily mask, ventilation). Because constant follow-up of contacts, exhaustive tests and the behavior of each individual can prevent infections. In the game situation, that would mean: if an attack is repulsed, a player with a virus has to leave the field and his team shrinks.

But when the virus team grows and grows, the defense can hardly do anything. The score at halftime in Germany: more than 33,000 reported new infections in just one day. In many European countries things don’t look much better.

In a joint statement launched by Priesemann in the specialized journal »Lancet«, renowned researchers in Europe therefore demand that the number of cases in Europe be drastically reduced. More than 300 scientists have signed, including the who’s who of German corona experts:

• Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité, Sandra Ciesek, Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the Frankfurt University Hospital, Melanie Brinkmann and Michael Meyer-Hermann from the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig.

• And especially noteworthy because so far he has not distinguished himself with position papers in the crown crisis: Lothar Wieler, the director of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Investigators beat you Indicative value of a maximum of ten new infections per million inhabitants per day before – for all of Europe. For Germany, that would be a maximum of about 830 new infections per day. The last time there were such a low number of cases in this country was in the summer. Starting in August, more people in Germany were infected again. At first, the growth started slowly, but by October at the latest, the number of cases increased rapidly. Today, the number of known infections is greater than ever.

“We really look for possible benefits from a large number of infections,” Priesemann said during a Science Media Center news conference on Friday. “But we haven’t found a single one.” It was a mistake to believe that a large number of infections allows more freedom. The opposite is true.

A look at countries such as China, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan shows that where all infections were constantly tracked, infection chains could be broken and the virus could be prevented from spreading on a large scale, the economy recovered faster, less people became ill or died. In many places, public life continues with almost no restrictions. “Zero Covid” is how the path chosen by these countries can be summed up.

Germany and many other Western countries, on the other hand, have tried to accept the virus. Many are now struggling to the limit of capacity in hospitals, with recurring regional or national closures when things get too precarious.

However, according to the position paper, low infection numbers have several advantages:

• save lives: When fewer people get infected, fewer people get sick or die. Until now, no country has been able to protect risk groups once the virus has spread.

• Easier control: If the number of cases is low, the limited capacities will not reach their limits as quickly. Constant testing, monitoring and isolation of suspected cases, as well as compliance with the AHA-L (distance, hygiene, daily mask, ventilation) may be sufficient to avoid a further increase in the number of cases.

• Better predictability: If the number of cases remains stable, no hasty additional restrictions are required. Planning security benefits the economy.

“Low case numbers only have advantages,” says Priesemann. “That is the scientific consensus in virology, epidemiology, economics and sociology.” In other words, what is good for your health is also good for business. In fact, not only virologists and epidemiologists have long been among the signatories of the position paper, but also renowned economists such as Clemens Fuest, president of the Ifo Institute.

How to try simmering milk

Science’s warning is not the first call for a pan-European strategy. Devi Sridhar insisted on this in an interview with SPIEGEL in the summer. She is Professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and advises Scotland on issues related to the pandemic. Regarding current development, he says: “Trying to simmer the virus to an acceptably low level is the recipe for disaster because, in light of the infectivity and hospitalization rate of Sars-CoV-2, governments are entering new locks Force. It was like trying to simmer milk.

Sridhar advocates completely reducing the number of infections to zero. “Countries have to decide if they want to live with the virus and the restrictions in daily life. Or if they want to eliminate it, like the countries of East Asia and the Pacific, and go back to everyday life with limited international mobility. “

Until now, European countries have repeatedly chosen the closure route to lower the infection curve, but never at the same time. This allowed the virus to enter over and over again. “In view of open borders, no single country can keep the number of infections low on its own, so a common goal and coordinated action is essential,” the current position paper says.

Therefore, the numbers should drop significantly across Europe, because vaccines will not improve the situation significantly in the foreseeable future. But how? The uncomfortable truth is that no one can tell exactly where people are infected. (Read more about it here.) Most detectable outbreaks run in families, but they are very easy to detect – after all, those affected live together. On the other hand, no one can say for sure whether stores, buses or trains are driving the pandemic. Who knows who is coughing next to you on the bus or sneezing at the supermarket checkout?

Instead of closing discrete areas where the risk of infection is particularly high, all that remains is the overall blockage. Ireland, for example, has shown that the number of cases also drops in winter.

“In the fall we lost the opportunity to press the numbers again”

In other countries, too, the breeding factor could be reduced to 0.7 by shutdowns in the fall and winter months after a start-up period. From this value, the number of new infections per week is reduced by about half, says Priesemann. Scientists therefore consider it realistic that Europe can reach the benchmark of less than 10 new infections per million inhabitants already in the spring. In regions with an incidence of 100 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, a few weeks were sufficient as the R value only dropped to 0.7.

“In the autumn we lost the opportunity to press the numbers again,” says Priesemann. That was a mistake. “We were hoping that the shutdown light would be sufficient to significantly reduce the number of cases. But that didn’t work. “The number of seriously ill people and even deaths has steadily increased. “The off light did almost nothing,” says Priesemann. At the latest, when it became clear in late November that the measures were barely taking effect, countermeasures should have been taken.

The discussion about caps on the number of new infections in mid-October shows how the wave of infections swept through politics. At that time it was agreed that decisive action should be taken no later than when there are 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. But more and more regions broke the mark, but there were still no drastic restrictions in many places.

Then a draft was leaked from the federal government: Tighter restrictions would be adopted by the end of November. The heads of the country reacted with disdain, the unrealistic idea that children should only be able to meet with a playmate dominated the discussion. At the end was the off light.

But unlike the first shutdown, the reminders seemingly faded. If the number of cases dropped in the spring before the shutdown because people apparently had massively restricted contacts on their own initiative, it is currently increasing. The seven-day incidence for the whole of Germany is now 185, in some regions even more than 600.