The GECKO committee said goodbye on Friday with a final report on the Corona situation. It describes a fairly stable infection situation with a declining trend in new cases. In addition, “individual reasons” for the decomposition of the body are officially given.
Once again, the experts promote vaccination and argue that the whole government crisis coordination (GECKO) approach, in which experts from different disciplines advise policy, should be retried for possible future epidemics. A revision of the epidemic law is recommended to be better prepared in the future.
The corona figures are likely to fall further
For the foreseeable future, it is predicted that Covid-19 coverage in intensive care units will remain more or less the same and that there will be a downward trend in normal wards. The data from the wastewater monitoring and the epidemiological reporting system indicated a decreasing trend in the incidence of contamination. The dominant variant is currently XBB.1.5, which was first discovered in the US last October.
To keep the pandemic situation stable and to ensure sufficient immunity among the population, the corona vaccination is still recommended, the newspaper said. This is especially true for the elderly and vulnerable groups.
The experts believe that there should also be a certain degree of corona monitoring after the reporting obligation has expired. This should be done with a mix of evaluating wastewater from sewage treatment plants and the genomic analysis of PCR testing. Consideration should be given to extending monitoring to other diseases such as influenza and RS viruses.
Criticism of Nehammer and of course in Lower Austria
The recently taken dissolution decision is justified with the “now stable pandemic situation”, which means that crisis coordination in the form of GECKO is no longer necessary. In addition, there were also “individual reasons for individual members”. This is not further explained in the report, but some experts said that anti-scientific statements by Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) and the end of vaccine advertising in Lower Austria by black and blue had angered them.
Complexity researcher Niki Popper criticized the “loud and rumbling sound” on “every side” on Twitter, without naming names. The virologist Andreas Bergthaler wanted to leave the committee early, citing “political developments” as the reason.
Source: Krone
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