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Christian Drosten, a prominent virologist and advisor to the German government on covid-19 issues, warned this Wednesday that the “true pandemic” of the new coronavirus is just beginning.
“The real pandemic is approaching now. Also here [na Alemanha]. At most, we can talk about the lessons of the first wave in Europe ”, in which the differences were enormous, Drosten stressed in an interview for the World Health Summit (CMS), which will take place in Berlin from 25 to 27 of this month in blended format. due to covid-19.
The German scientist recommended that given the way the first wave was fought, the approach to fighting the pandemic should be changed so that the situation can be addressed in the coming months.
“It is very important to inform the population well and widely,” said Drosten. And he warned: “The costs can be serious if politicians use the pandemic in their political messages. This is very complicated and the virus immediately takes its toll. We can see what is happening in the United States ”, the country with the highest number of covid-19 cases (almost 6.9 million) and deaths (200,818), he noted.
In the coming months, he recommended, and to control the situation, it is necessary to “change things” and it is also important to make “pragmatic decisions.”
“German success”?
The German expert relativized the speeches about “German success” in the fight against the pandemic, arguing that this is only because Germany reacted four weeks earlier than other countries.
“We react with exactly the same means. There is nothing in particular that we have done well. We did it before. That is why we have been successful, ”he said, denying that the German health authorities functioned better than the French ones or that the country’s hospitals are better equipped than the Italian ones.
“If we apply this to what is coming in the fall, then we will have to make it clear that we are still not doing any better than the others,” he warned.
Drosten gave as an example the case of Argentina, where the pandemic emerged in winter and, for that reason, it is being “very difficult” to control the spread of covid-19 despite restrictive measures. “In Germany, we should look much more differently and precisely at what is happening abroad. We have to stop discussing issues such as football stadiums, something completely fallacious, “he said.
On the other hand, Drosten recalled that science currently enjoys “great credibility”, but warned that this could change “at any time”. “Only at the end will we know how science did it, because this pandemic, in the first place, is not a scientific phenomenon, but a natural catastrophe,” he observed.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed at least 971,677 deaths and more than 31.6 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
