As far as their health care is concerned, the population has other concerns than dealing with an increasingly semantic question.
It was only a matter of time. After health experts such as the German virologist Christian Drosten and the Austrian complexity researcher Peter Klimek declared the pandemic over, Health Minister Johannes Rauch and Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer are now pushing ahead. All rules could slowly be lifted – including the obligation to report Covid-19.
That would mean the end of the pandemic was almost official. The first half of the year is given as the time horizon for the final return to normality. The fact that even Vienna’s City Councilor for Health, Peter Hacker, co-inventor of the restrictive “Vienna Way”, considers this roadmap to be feasible, illustrates the broad agreement with the realization that Sars-CoV-2 will have to be dealt with differently in the future. And just like any other cold virus, which regularly causes waves of infection, but which does not bring the hospitals to their capacity limits.
