Germany's Robert Koch Institute Not Ruling Out 3 Waves of Coronavirus Pandemic

BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th April, 2020) The scientific community is inclined to think there might be a second and even a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lothar Wieler, the president of Robert Koch Institute (RKI) which compiles official data on the coronavirus for the German government, said on Thursday.

"The majority of scientists assume that there will be a second wave and maybe even a third. There are also many scholars who believe that the fall will be the time when this happens. Obviously, this virus will be present in our country for months. We will have to live for months in this 'new normality,'" Wieler said at a briefing in Berlin.

As early as back in March, Wieler warned that the pandemic "will be developing in waves," and epidemiologists in many countries have concurred since then.

At the moment, the so-called basic reproduction level of the virus in Germany is 0.76, meaning that one carrier transmits the virus to less than one other person, Wieler said.

"This is a good development, of course, and we must strive to maintain it," he said, adding that social distancing behaviors should be retained.

According to RKI, it is the basic level of reproduction that governments should be guided with when working out response measures to curb the spread of the virus.

The indicator falling bellow 1 is the threshold of when restrictive measures can be abated. At the same time, the institute has urged not to overestimate the value of this indicator since it differs from region to region and is usually approximated based on average.