Corona: “The danger lurks inside” – experts are calling for a change of course in Germany

• ofStefan Krieger

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It is considered certain that the coronavirus will spread through the air in particular. Researchers criticize the planned curfews as not very effective.

Berlin – The draft for a stricter Infection Protection Act provides nationwide uniform night curfews from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. in all districts and urban districts with a seven-day incidence of 100 or more. The restrictions are intended, among other things, to ensure that people do not gather outdoors in the warmer season, and thus guarantee protection against infection with the corona virus.

With exit restrictions, politicians want to prevent people from meeting at all at times – at least where it is public. But what is the real risk of contracting the virus outside of closed areas?

“Those who meet for coffee in the pedestrian zone do not have to invite anyone into their living room”: With these clear words, experts for aerosols – the air mixtures in which the coronavirus also floats – are now addressing those responsible in politics. You are calling for a change of course in the measures to contain the corona epidemic. “If we want to get the pandemic under control, we have to make people aware that the danger is lurking INSIDE,” says a letter to the federal government and the state governments that is available to the German Press Agency (dpa).

Aerosols in closed rooms: Contagion even without direct contact

Measures would need to be taken in homes, offices, classrooms, residential complexes and care facilities. They warn that infection occurs indoors even if you do not meet someone directly, but an infectious person has been in a poorly ventilated room beforehand. “Unfortunately, to this day, essential findings of our research work have not been translated into practical action,” criticize the authors of the request to the government. Debates about strolling on river promenades, staying in beer gardens, jogging or cycling are counterproductive because they are more of a symbolic nature.

Measures such as the compulsory mask when jogging on river promenades, for example, “did not have any significant impact on the infection rate,” write the experts. Sars-CoV-2 pathogens would almost always be transmitted indoors. This is extremely rare in the open air, in the alcohol range. The letter says that the limited resources should not be wasted on this. Also, large groups – so-called clusters – are never infected outdoors, as can be observed indoors, for example in homes, schools, events, choir rehearsals or bus trips.

A curfew does not help prevent infection

That is why, from the point of view of scientists, curfews promise more than they can hold. In particular, this does not prevent “the secret indoor meetings”, but “merely increases the motivation to evade government orders even more,” they write. “Wearing a mask in the pedestrian zone and then having a coffee table in your own living room without a mask is not what we as experts understand by infection prevention.”

Instead, the authors recommend: keeping several measures indoors, such as indoor meetings as short as possible, creating conditions like outdoors with frequent intermittent or cross ventilation, wearing effective masks indoors, and installing room air purifiers and filters wherever people come together Have to stay longer in closed rooms – for example in nursing homes, offices and schools.