What is the difference between the first and the second/third wave of Covid-19? – German perspective

摘要

Now it has been more than 12 months since the first cases of the new Corona virus variant SARS Cov 2 have been detected in China. The first wave of the pandemic hit a lot of countries hard and many patients died. Not enough specialized equipment and limited knowledge of the disease added to the severity of this first phase. We all learned from our mistakes made during this first wave of the pandemic and due to that the confidence to be able to manage the second wave a lot better was high. Nevertheless, much higher infection numbers, more patients in ICUs and in some countries also more deaths were seen during the second wave. In this editorial we will describe the differences between the first and second wave from a European-German perspective and look at the impact it had on different parts of our lives.