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Wednesday 23 September 2020
In Germany, the corona pandemic has so far been milder than in other countries. Virologist Drosten cautions against building on this tentative success: “We didn’t do anything particularly well. We did it before,” he says, and puts himself in the mood for a more difficult fall.
Berlin virologist Christian Drosten sees that Germany is not yet adequately prepared for the next period of the corona pandemic. “We have to change things to control the situation in the coming months,” he said ahead of the World Health Summit, due to take place in October. “The pandemic will only really start now, for us too.”
Pragmatic decisions are necessary, Drosten said according to the World Health Summit. “There are already festive speeches about the German success, but it is not very clear where it came from.” It just goes back to the fact that Germany reacted about four weeks earlier than other countries.
“We reacted with exactly the same means as the others. We didn’t do anything particularly well. We just did it before,” explained the director of the Institute of Virology at the Charité. “We were not successful because our health authorities were better than the French or because our hospitals are better equipped than the Italians,” continued Drosten.
Vaccination campaign for the whole of next year
“If you take that into fall now, then of course you must realize that we will not continue to do anything better than others,” Drosten said. Germany must analyze events abroad much more differently and more closely. “We have to stop talking about things like football stadiums. It really is completely misleading.”
At the moment, no one knows exactly how the pandemic will continue. There is a possibility that the whole thing is no longer manageable and “that science, for example with the availability of vaccines, has simply been too slow.” Only in the end will it become clear how science has done it. “Because this pandemic is not a scientific phenomenon, it is a natural disaster.”
It should also be clear that approval of a vaccine does not immediately mean the solution to the problem, Drosten said. First, the priority must be with risk groups. “In addition to the expected distribution competition, it is not so easy to fill so many doses of vaccines into vials and then inoculate them,” he explained. “That is why this is a commitment for all of 2021.”
