The president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, has warned of a violent fourth Corona wave in the autumn. "If we do not drastically increase the current vaccination rates, then the current fourth wave can take a fulminant course in the autumn," Wieler said on Wednesday in Berlin. "The pandemic is not over yet." Already, he said, the number of people who need hospital treatment is rising - especially among younger people. The vast majority of them are unvaccinated, he said.

The more people who get vaccinated, the less bad the fourth wave will be and the sooner the pandemic will be over, the RKI chief stressed. "It is in our own hands to prevent many severe courses and also deaths." The risk of having to go to the hospital with a Corona infection is currently ten times lower in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated people, he said.

The RKI estimates that vaccinations prevented about 77,000 hospitalisations and about 20,000 cases in intensive care units between January and July. That is a "really great success of vaccination," Wieler said. It is estimated that vaccination prevented more than 700,000 cases of infection during the period, he said.

"What really needs to be clear to all of us: Anyone who doesn't get vaccinated will be infected with Sars-CoV-2 for the foreseeable future," Wieler warned. He stressed, "Everyone who can get vaccinated but hasn't gotten vaccinated yet: Please get vaccinated. And that goes for everyone in our country over the age of 12."

The health ministers of the states have decided to relax the Corona quarantine rules at schools. This decision is also welcomed by the city of Bonn, the city announced on Wednesday afternoon.

The head of Bonn's public health department, Dr. Susanne Engels, explains that due to the delta variant, most positive infections happen within the family: "A positive case at a school leads to a large number of close contacts, but the past weeks since the start of school have shown that hardly any other children and adolescents are infected at the schools. Most infections take place in the home environment.“

Carolin Krause, head of the department for schools, social affairs and youth, feels the same. She also supports the decision of the federal states and emphasises: "Children and adolescents were and are particularly affected by the consequences of the Corona pandemic. This makes it all the more important to ensure as much face-to-face teaching as possible and to maintain regular operations in daycare.“

In the future, the focus of quarantine regulations, according to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, will be on isolating individual, infected children at home. (Original text: ga/dpa / Translation: Mareike Graepel)