A Corona autumn wave has been developing in Germany for several weeks. All the indicators show this. The federal government’s infection radar, which evaluates the viral load in wastewater based on data from over 100 sewage treatment plants, shows that the number of infections has only fallen minimally compared to the summer wave. In the last few weeks the numbers have increased significantly again.
At the peak of the summer wave in July, the viral load was 118,000 gene copies per liter of wastewater. At the beginning of August it fell to 103,000 and is currently at 163,000 gene copies. Overall, the viral load was more than twice as high throughout the summer as in the previous year.
According to estimates by GrippeWeb, a portal of the Robert Koch Institute, the current incidence of COVID-19 in the population is around 1,400 per 100,000 inhabitants. This means that 1.4 percent of the population becomes infected with the virus every week. The climb points steeply upwards. In the previous week the incidence was 1,200 and at the beginning of August it was 600.
In Bavaria, wastewater monitoring shows an even more significant increase. In Munich, the viral load in wastewater has more than doubled compared to the previous week and is therefore higher than it has been since the beginning of the year. Central responsibility for this lies with Oktoberfest, which served as a two-week-long superspreader event with its 6.7 million visitors. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the state investigation office reported a 78 percent increase in the number of cases compared to the previous week.
Also various other indicators of the Infection radars from the federal government show the sharp increase in the number of infections. For example, the number of doctor visits for acute respiratory illnesses with COVID-19 is 89 per 100,000 inhabitants per week, two to three times higher than in the summer.
The number of hospitalizations due to severe respiratory illness with COVID-19 is at a 7-day incidence of 2.2. It is three times as high as at the beginning of July. The number of deaths, which is currently 80 per week, has also tripled compared to the beginning of July.
The virologist and specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiology Timo Ulrichs explained Focus Online: “An autumn wave could well be imminent, and the new fitness of the sub-variant KP.3.1.1 could also contribute to this.” In fact, KP.3.1.1 plays a central role in the current autumn wave.
KP.3.1.1 is a successor to the JN.1 line and is already dominant in several countries. A new study by Japanese scientists published in the medical journal The Lancet was published, states: “KP.3.1.1 has a significantly higher reproduction number than its predecessors KP.2, KP.2.3 and KP.3.” The predecessor variants KP.2 and KP.3 already have one in the summer months increasing infection rates, even though the weather conditions are less favorable for spread in summer than in winter.
In Germany, KP.3.1.1 currently accounts for 43 percent of the infection rate and is therefore predominant. At the same time, the recombinant subline XEC also has a share of 28 percent – and the trend is rising. XEC was first discovered in Germany in June and has since spread to 27 countries. Virologists estimate that it has about twice as much growth advantage as KP.3.1.1 and will be the dominant variant in winter.
Above all, the emergence of new variants refutes the lie about the supposed end of the pandemic. In fact, the pandemic is not over, and it is only a matter of time before an even deadlier variant emerges. This means that Covid-19 – contrary to the claims in politics and the media – is in no way comparable to the flu.
The Baden-Württemberg State Statistical Office recently published figures intended to investigate exactly this. It comes to the conclusion: In 2023, a total of 186 people died of flu in Baden-Württemberg. At the same time, 3,343 deaths from Corona were recorded, almost 18 times as many. And this was the year in which all protective measures were ended with the argument that the pandemic was over.
In the summer months, the difference in death rates was even more pronounced. While five people died of the flu in Baden-Württemberg from June to August 2023, there were 128 corona deaths. That means 25 times as many.
Currently, around twelve percent of all people who need to be treated in hospital for a respiratory infection are there because of a corona infection.
The director of virology at the Technical University of Munich, Ulrike Protzer, said: “Corona is not a cold, and it will not become one. Just like RSV and influenza, the virus penetrates particularly deeply into the lungs, attacks the respiratory tract more severely and can also affect other organs in the body.
In contrast to RSV and influenza, there is also a high risk of developing long-term effects from a corona infection, which can affect almost every organ and can also have a devastating impact on basic abilities: such as moving, seeing or working. The probability of Long Covid disease is around ten percent with the first infection and increases with each subsequent infection.
Exposing the population to the corona virus forever and allowing themselves to be reinfected again and again can only mean fundamentally deteriorating and destroying the health and lives of millions of people in the long term.
