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Clemens Martin Auer, the head of the traffic light commission, had been against the color orange on Monday afternoon, but the next day he turned around. He justifies this with increasing numbers of infected persons.
The mathematician and simulation expert from the Technical University of Vienna, Niki Popper, on the other hand, is not at all surprised by the rising numbers in the ORF report: “A slow increase was already visible since July. In addition, there were the vacation returnees and that there are now more indoor activities again”. The numbers would continue to rise, says Popper.
The expert sees three remedies:
- Mask wearing to stem the spread.
- Restrict indoor events to avoid super-spreaders.
- Thirdly, testing, contact tracing – i.e. tracing the contacts of infected persons – and isolating infected persons should work. It would depend on this whether a second corona wave would occur.
Popper: “The decisive factors are testing and tracing and the speed at which this takes place. The figures indicate that this does not work sufficiently. If we don’t get faster here, we are heading for a problem.” Every euro invested here is a well invested one.
The traffic light is “basically a good idea”, but communication needs to be improved, says Popper. And he let criticism of the policy be heard: The lead that Austria had built up was probably wasted over the summer. Because, Popper stressed, it had been foreseeable since July that the figures would rise again.
- Hector Pascua with reports from ORF ZiB2, 15 September 2020, Picture: stockilyapp.com
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