The third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic could lead to significantly higher incidences than the second. This is the result of a new modeling from the department of traffic system planning and traffic telematics by Kai Nagel at the TU Berlin.
“A potential emergency brake, as it may be decided on March 22, 2021 at the federal-state conference, will not change anything,” the researchers write in a study that was carried out on Monday at the corona summit of the federal and state governments should be presented.
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In this development I could according to the simulations even the progressive vaccination program and the warmer weather in spring do not change anything. If the current vaccination rate was continued, almost 15 percent of the population would have at least one primary vaccination in mid-April.
“This lowers the R value by around 15 percent and is therefore far too little to compensate for the 35 to 70 percent increase in the R value caused by virus variant B.1.1.7,” explains Kai Nagel. Even a 50 percent increase in the vaccination rate from April 1st would not change that.
The reproduction number (R) denotes the number of people who are infected on average from one infected person.
Worse conditions than in spring 2020
“So we are going into the warmer season with worse conditions than in 2020,” says Kai Nagel. The simulations would clearly show that infections practically only take place indoors in one’s own households, during private visits, in offices and at school – when there is prolonged and unprotected contact without a mask.
“Our calculations show that it is more effective to involve all areas than to add further protective measures in a single area,” explains Nagel. For example, after the introduction of the mask requirement in retail, the complete closure of non-essential stores had little additional effect.
Indoor contacts with clear consequences
Areas in which unprotected indoor contacts are still possible, according to the simulations contribute dramatically to the infection process and drive the R-value well above 1.
The team around Nagel has been using data from traffic planning since mid-2020 to model a newly developed model for the spread of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus under various assumptions. The results are regularly shared with the federal and state governments.
The massive use of tests could at least slow down the third wave. “Should it be possible to implement a test strategy that covers the areas of education, work and leisure on a large scale, the number of cases in the third wave could be effectively reduced – but in the best case only to the level of the second wave at the end of December 2020”, so Nail.
For Berlin alone, this would mean carrying out around 3.4 million tests per week. People who test positive would have to go into quarantine immediately and wait for the result of a PCR test there. Without a previous quick test or wearing a mask, the experts recommend avoiding contacts indoors.
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