Saturday, December 11th, 2021
19-member corona expert council
Scholz trusts Drosten and Streeck
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Due to the coronavirus pandemic, scientists are calling for a council of experts to be set up to advise the federal government on combating the pandemic. Chancellor Scholz now appoints the members of the team. Among others, Drosten, Wieler – and also Streeck will be there.
A new coronavirus expert council is to advise the federal government around Chancellor Olaf Scholz on how to combat pandemics in the future. According to a media report, the new committee will include virologists Christian Drosten and Hendrik Streeck. The list of the council was completed on Friday, reported the “Welt am Sonntag”. Drosten, chief virologist at the Berlin Charité, and Streeck, head of the virological institute at the Bonn University Clinic, had expressed very different views in the past about the measures required in the corona crisis.
In contrast to Streeck, Drosten had spoken out in favor of tougher encroachments on fundamental rights and assessed the pandemic as more severe. Unlike Drosten, Streeck was never involved in corona consultations under Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In addition to the two virologists, according to the report, Thomas Mertens, head of the Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO), Lothar Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the virologist Melanie Brinkmann from the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, the physicist Viola Priesemann, among others from the Max Planck Institute and the intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis from the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI Intensive Care Register) belong to the committee.
According to the “Bild” newspaper, the committee should also include the following scientists: Prof. Reinhard Berner (Director of the Children’s Clinic at the Dresden University Hospital), Prof. Cornelia Betsch (Professor of Health Communication at the University of Erfurt), Prof. Jörg Dötsch ( German Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine), Prof. Christine Falk (President of the German Society for Immunology), Prof. Ralph Hertwig (psychologist and director of the research area Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin), Prof. Lars Kaderali (Institute for Bioinformatics, University Medicine Greifswald), Prof. Hayo Kroemer (Chairman of the Berlin Charité Board), Prof. Michael Meyer-Herrmann (Head of the Systems Immunology Department at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research), Dr. Johannes Niessen (Head of the Cologne Health Department), Prof. Leif Erik Sander (Head of the Infection Immunology and Vaccine Research Research Group at the Charité) and Stefan Sternberg (District Administrator of Ludwigslust-Parchim).
In the past few months, scientists had pushed for such a body to be set up several times. Brinkmann and Karagiannidis were among the signatories of an open letter in mid-November. “We consider it necessary that the fight against pandemics has a stronger factual basis,” it said. Political decisions would have to be “oriented much more strongly than before on scientific findings”. According to “Welt am Sonntag”, the Expert Council will meet for the first time on Tuesday. From now on it will meet at least once a week.
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