NAfter his much-noticed statement about the end of the pandemic last December, virologist Christian Drosten sees a misunderstanding. In which interview The Charité professor said on Thursday in the “Coronavirus Update” podcast on NDR-Info that he actually said something different than what was received by parts of the public. “What I said is: I expect that the coming winter wave will be more of an endemic wave (…) and that the pandemic will then be over.” The end of the pandemic cannot be announced in advance, you can do that only in hindsight – i.e. after this wave.
About the reading of some media and politicians, after which he declared the pandemic over, he said: “I think everyone who has heard me communicate so far knows that I don’t actually say such research things in public.” He could only say what he expects: “That we will say soon, in a few months: In hindsight, that was the first endemic wave of this virus, and the pandemic is over.”
Shortly before the turn of the year, sentences from a “Tagesspiegel” interview with Drosten were also closed political calls for further easing guided. The newspaper quoted him as saying at the end of December: “We are experiencing the first endemic wave of Sars-Cov-2 this winter, in my opinion the pandemic is over.” He added: That means that after this winter there will be such a broad and there is resilient population immunity, “that the virus can hardly get through in the summer”.
At the end of March, Drosten and the Frankfurt virologist Sandra Ciesek withdrew as regular conversation partners of the Corona podcast. However, a return to the microphone depending on the situation had not been ruled out. In recent months, several special episodes with other guests have appeared in the series. According to the broadcaster, the podcast was accessed almost 146 million times by the end of December 2022.
In the new episode, Drosten also explained that, in his view, the XBB.1.5 coronavirus subline, which is increasingly being detected in the USA, should also become prevalent in Germany. “Simply because the relative transmissibility of this virus is so much greater than the other viruses currently circulating.” The advantage is reminiscent of the days when the delta and omicron variants came into existence. But that doesn’t mean that a huge new wave is threatening this winter, said Drosten.
The number of proven cases of XBB.1.5 in Germany was still relatively low at the end of 2022. “The XBB.1.5 variant, which is widespread in the United States of America, had a share of 1 percent,” writes the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in its Covid 19 weekly report on Thursday evening. “Their share in the previous weeks was less than 0.5 percent.” Like other sub-lines, the sub-line is under observation. Preliminary data indicated a growth advantage over other and previously circulating sublines. The information relates to data from the last week of the past year and is based on small absolute numbers.
