The Corona winter is approaching and politicians are discussing a return to wearing masks indoors. Virologist Streeck advises against it: Most people do not get infected in public. Also: “It can no longer be our goal to avoid every infection.”
The virologist Hendrik Streeck considers new corona measures to be superfluous – even if he expects the numbers to increase in autumn. The summer wave was “created by itself and broke by itself, without the effect of measures,” Streeck told the “Bild am Sonntag”. “Measures can reduce a corona wave, but not break it.”
In the summer wave there were “probably well over a million new infections per day”, if you count the undiscovered cases. “That has certainly slowed down the current wave.” Nevertheless, “it can be assumed that the numbers will increase again in the course of the autumn,” Streeck told the newspaper.
The virologist advises against a general obligation to wear a mask indoors. Presenting the mask as a “wonderful preventive method” against infections is wrong, said Streeck, who is a member of the Federal Government’s Expert Council. Most people got infected in private rooms. Instead, one should “explain to people who are particularly at risk in which situations a mask is important and how it is worn correctly”. According to “Bild am Sonntag”, Streeck explained: “It can no longer be our goal to avoid every infection.”
The Infection Protection Act provides the federal states with the option of imposing a mask requirement indoors if the infection situation makes it necessary. In a meeting of the health ministers at the beginning of the week, the countries had agreed to proceed uniformly on this issue and to develop appropriate threshold values. There was also agreement that the mask requirement in local transport should be adhered to.
Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach is pushing for a return to the general obligation to wear masks indoors, referring to the situation in hospitals. The virologist Alexander Kekulé warned in mid-October against dramatizing the corona situation in the clinics. Of course there are currently many colds and corona cases, he told MDR Aktuell. That’s why a lot of staff is absent: this has sometimes been the case with the flu in recent years.
This is now being reinforced by requirements for isolation and quarantine in the case of Corona. “The hospitals have a problem there.” Kekulé spoke out in favor of relaxing the isolation rules for infected people: “I think, for example, if someone is a bus driver or is in the police force or works somewhere else in critical infrastructure, then of course they don’t necessarily have to do extensive isolation or quarantine .” When the symptoms are gone, he can “back to work”.