Christian Drosten, Head of Virology at Berlin University Medicine Charité, described the omicron variant as an “opportunity” in the Tagesspiegel interview. The “weakened infection” with the variant “on the basis of the vaccination” is “something like a moving train that you jump on.” At some point you have to jump on this train, “otherwise you won’t get anywhere”. Because there is “no alternative” that sooner or later everyone will or will have to become infected with Sars-Cov-2.
You cannot “over the long term receive the immune protection of the entire population every few months with a booster vaccination,” said the virologist. “The virus has to do that.” However, Drosten emphasized that this was only possible “on the basis of vaccination protection anchored in the general population”, otherwise “too many people would die”.
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The population immunity among adults is developing in a “clear direction”: “The population is building up immunity and maintaining it.” Germany is now “in the process” of being able to declare the pandemic over and to be able to declare the endemic phase. “But because of the high proportion of older people in the population, we have to do this in Germany through vaccinations. Far too many people would die from natural infections.”
Germany has already “managed quite a bit of this path via vaccinations”, but must now “come to the end so that we can enter the endemic phase in the course of 2022 and declare the pandemic situation over”. Will we ever live like we did before the pandemic? “Yes absolutely. I’m completely sure of that,” Drosten told the Tagesspiegel.
Drosten did not comment on the obligation to vaccinate. “Politicians have to decide whether they want to do this through compulsory vaccination or in other ways.” However, he emphasized “how important it is that we close the vaccination gap as completely as possible, especially in the age groups that are at risk”. Because it is not possible to achieve “herd immunity” that would also protect the unvaccinated. “There is scientific evidence for that.”
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With regard to the risk assessment of the vaccination, Drosten said: “It’s vaccination versus virus, not vaccination versus no vaccination.” And as a virologist he could say “that vaccination is simply better off”. The fact that there is too little experience with mRNA vaccines is “really nonsense” in view of the billions of mRNA vaccinations that have now been carried out.
On the contrary, the mRNA and vector vaccines come closest to natural immunity, according to Drosten. “They activate the cellular immune response much better and thus make a very important contribution to protection against severe Covid disease and also against immune escape variants such as omicron.” The protein and inactivated vaccines lack this ability.
The next milestone is a live vaccine
It is clear, however, that a “live vaccination” is needed, preferably a spray with which “weakened viruses or a modern variant thereof” are sprayed into the nose and trigger mucosal immunity there. “That would be much better transmission protection, the next milestone.”
Drosten also commented on the quality control of communication between scientists and the public. So far there are no standards for this. “I hope that a discussion will be initiated within science about how such standards for science communication can be defined and made binding for scientists.”
Scientists who falsify data get “serious problems” and there are sanctions for such misconduct. But there is also misconduct in science communication. This is expressly not about censorship, but scientists must “distinguish between unchecked opinions and statements that claim to be based on valid scientific facts.”
In the future, Drosten sees two topics in particular gaining in importance: On the one hand, in two years’ time one will have to talk about Long-Covid, the as yet little-researched sequela of a corona infection, and on the other hand about the Mers corona virus. This “Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus”, which is only distantly related to Sars-Cov-2, has jumped from camels to humans several times.
Most recently, in 2015/2016, almost 200 people in South Korea fell ill with the introduced virus. Mers has “not become any less harmless, on the contrary,” says Drosten. “The virus now circulating has become more transmissible or virulent.”
You can read the entire interview verbatim in the printed Sunday edition of the Tagesspiegel or online here.
